The Bennington Badgers will face off against the Gretna Dragons at 4:30 p.m. on Thursday. The teams are on pretty different trajectories at the moment (Bennington has eight straight wins, Gretna has four straight defeats), but none of that matters once you're on the field.
Bennington is coming in fresh off a high-stakes matchup with another one of Nebraska's top teams: Gretna East, who was ranked 12th at the time (Bennington was ranked seventh). The Badgers came out on top in a nail-biter against the Griffins on Tuesday, sneaking past 2-1.
Jarron Utterback spent all seven innings on the mound, and it's clear why: he surrendered only one earned run on five hits and racked up eight Ks.
On the hitting side, Bennington saw seven different players step up and record at least one hit. One of them was Hunter Spencer, who scored a run while going 1-for-2.
Meanwhile, Gretna came up short against Lincoln Southeast on Wednesday and fell 7-3.
Griffin Goldman was cooking despite his team's loss, going 2-for-4 with one home run, two RBI, and one double. That double marked the first that he hit this season.
Bennington pushed their record up to 8-0 with the victory, which was their seventh straight on the road dating back to last season. Those road wins came thanks in part to their hitting performance across that stretch, as they averaged 7.7 runs over those games. As for Gretna, their loss dropped their record down to 1-6.
Gretna's hitters will have their work cut out for them on Thursday. Bennington has been retiring batters left and right this season, having averaged 8.5 strikeouts per game. It's a different story for Gretna, though, as they've been averaging only 3.9 strikeouts. Will Bennington keep running through batters, or will the Dragons buck the trend?
Bennington beat Gretna 8-4 in their previous meeting back in April of 2019. Will the Badgers repeat their success, or do the Dragons have a new game plan this time around? We'll find out soon enough.
