The Owensboro baseball team will try to win a second consecutive 9th District tournament title after earning the No. 1 seed with only one district loss this season.
The Red Devils will kick off the tournament Monday against No. 4 Daviess County, while No. 2 Owensboro Catholic and No. 3 Apollo square off Tuesday. The championship is set for Wednesday, with all three games beginning at 7 p.m. at Chautauqua Park.
Owensboro will try win back-to-back district titles after several years of dominance by Apollo and Daviess County. In the last 20 seasons, the Eagles and Panthers have won 17 combined 9th District titles. Owensboro (2012, 2018) won two and Owensboro Catholic (2005) won one.
Only five other times — the Red Devils in 2006, 2007 and 2009, and the Aces in 2003 and 2004 — did the title game not feature both the Eagles and Panthers.
This year, Owensboro (22-9, 5-1 9th District) locked up the top seed in the final district game against Apollo — a win that came in the middle of a hot streak for the Red Devils — and they couldn’t have ended the regular season in much better fashion.
Before losing on the road to Bowling Green in the season finale, Owensboro rattled off 11 consecutive victories and won 13 out of 14 games. They outscored opponents 136 to 44 during the 14-game stretch.
The lone district loss for the Red Devils was on the road to Owensboro Catholic, when the Aces came from behind for a walk-off, nine-inning win after a mid-game weather delay.
The Aces (19-14, 3-3) and Eagles (16-15, 3-3) split their regular season meetings and tied in the standings, but Catholic won the tiebreaker for the higher seed.
After their win over Owensboro, the Aces struggled the rest of the season. A nine-game win streak quickly flipped to a five-game losing skid as the offense went cold. However, they did close with a pair of strong victories to gain some momentum heading into the tournament.
Apollo was streaky for much of the season, going on a handful of alternating winning and losing stretches that was largely predicated on offensive output. One string of five wins over region opponents included impressive road victories of 9-2 over Breckinridge County and 10-0 over Catholic.
Daviess County (10-18, 1-5) went through a few tough stretches without a win, but they did close the season with some strong play. They were dominant in a 5-1 win over Owensboro Catholic for their lone district victory, and they’ve kept most of their games close through the final month of play.
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