BOURBON – The bats remained hot for the Tippecanoe Valley baseball team Monday night. The Vikings came in averaging 10 runs per game on offense and continued the offensive prowess with a 14-1 waxing of county line rival Triton in six innings.

Things looked to be evenly matched in the early goings of the game with a 2-1 score after the first inning in favor of the Vikings. Valley tacked on a pair of runs in both the second and fifth innings to open up a 7-1 lead.

“The biggest thing I tell our guys is to get it out of accident range. Six or seven runs just isn’t enough,” stated Valley head coach Justin Branock.

Branock’s team took that to heart heading into the sixth inning, clearing out any doubt of an accident by pouring on seven runs in the frame on six hits to help end the game early by way of the 10-run rule.

“We had a comfortable lead, but we found out last weekend against Elkhart Central that six or seven runs is not always enough,” continued Branock. “I keep telling them to not get satisfied with a 7-1 type of lead. Don’t put it into cruise control, keep the pressure on.

“Now, once we get it up to a lead up to 10 or more runs, we aren’t going to try and embarrass an opponent. We’ll back it off, but we want to be able to keep the pedal down until we can build a bigger lead.”

The Vikings had the pedal firmly pressed down all game as they tallied 16 hits. Leading the charge was Brandon Webster. The junior Viking led all players with 4 hits while scoring three runs and tallying two RBIs.

Austin Perdieu was tops for the game with three RBIs on a 3-4 day at the plate, including a two-run double in the second inning. Perdieu also scored once in the contest.

As good as Valley’s offense was in Monday’s game, the defense was just as spectacular. The Vikings had one error on defense that led to Triton’s only run, that was basically the only flaw for the visiting squad. The defensive domination started on the mound with junior Luke Helton.

Helton pitched all six innings for the Vikings, giving up just one hit, no earned runs and struck out seven Triton batters. The performance was exactly what Valley wanted and far from what the Trojans wanted to see.

“He (Helton) threw a great game,” said Triton head coach Brad Hargrave. “He had a little bit of heat. He obviously went the whole game and that’s pretty good. There’s not much you can really say about it, he threw a great game. He put the ball over the plate, we just needed to hit it and we didn’t.”

Skyler Reichert took the mound for the Trojans and missed on a few sports early, putting himself in a small hole. Reichert took the loss for the Trojans with a five-inning, six run performance. Reichert highlighted his day with four strikeouts.

Spencer Glingle had the lone hit for Triton in the second inning. Glingle also recorded a stolen base for the Trojans. Cordale Keyser reached on an error in the first inning and would score the only Trojan run for the day later in that frame.

Triton (0-2) will play Caston Tuesday night while Valley (3-1) will travel to Warsaw on Wednesday evening.