By DAVE WOODALL
Slidell sportswriter
SLIDELL — For the Northshore Panthers, the Monday, April 22 home game against the St. Pauls Wolves turned out to be one of their biggest wins of the season.
Northshore erased a six-run deficit to win, 8-7, against district foe St.?Paul’s.
Panther designated hitter Brett Lambert homered in the fourth inning and had six RBIs.
Northshore collected 12 hits on the night with Lambert getting three of them. Michael Quintana, Trevin Stein and Hayden Nugent each had two hits for the Panthers. J.P Lagreco, Dane Pedersen had singles in the game.
Logan Trent led the Wolves with two hits, one a home run in the third inning and three RBIs. Zach Buster, Christian Commander and Kyle Schimpf each had hits with Schimpf also hitting a home run in the third inning.
Northshore second baseman Joshua Marques hit a walkoff RBI single over left fielder Christian Commander’s head, capping a three-run seventh that gave the Panthers the huge win.
Wolves catcher, Handsome Monica, homered in the seventh inning adding an insurance run to make the score 7-5, but it wasn’t enough, as Northshore scratched for three runs in the bottom of the seventh to pull out the victory.
The winning pitcher for Northshore was Michael McKinney who came on in the third inning in relief of starter Nico Cuccia. Blake Locicero took the loss for St. Paul’s.
With the win, Northshore is still in the running for a spot in the 5A playoffs.
“This has been a real rough season,” said Mauldin. “We’ve lost 10 games by one run so it’s been frustrating.”
Mauldin summed it up saying, “This was a huge win for us against the sixth-ranked team in the state especially when you come back from 6-0 to do it.”
The Panthers, now 14-17 for the year and 3-8 in district play, played the Slidell Tigers for the final game of the regular season on Wednesday, April 24, which was after the Slidell Independent’s deadline.
St. Pauls, 17-7 on the year and 8-3 in district play, finished their season on Wednesday as well and have only to wait to see what seed they will receive when the brackets are released this week.