By Matt Wallisa

It was a windy Friday evening at St. Xavier High School as the No. 16 Bombers squared off against No. 39 Talawanda. 

The starting pitchers featured St. Xavier unsigned senior Dominic Plageman against Talawanda junior Austin Davidson. The tale of the tape between the two proved to be very different. 

Plageman put on an absolute dominate performance, only giving up two hits over his seven innings of work while striking out ten batters.  

Meanwhile, Davidson would only last one third of an inning giving up seven earned runs. 

Senior Connor Hundley led off with a leadoff single. He would go on to steal second base and move into scoring position. A couple batters later sophomore Jordan McDonough (OSU recruit) ripped an RBI single to give St. Xavier into the lead.  Following McDonough, junior Joe Gellenbeck hit an RBI single giving St. Xavier the 2-0 lead.  

Command issue's started to mount for Talawanda's Davidson resulting in four walks and a hit batter in the inning. A couple base hits mixed in with control issues and Talawanda found itself down 7-0 by the end of the inning. 

Davidson was later replaced by junior Grant Ballou, who put together an impressive relief performance with six and two thirds of an inning of scoreless baseball.

Talawanda was limited offensively, but managed to put up a run in the top of the 5th when Senior Nate McCleese hit a home run over the right field fence cutting the Talawanda deficit to six runs.

Plageman would return in the seventh to finish what he started and earn the complete game. He struck out two Talawanda hitters to close the door and cement a 7-1 victory in favor of the Bombers.

St. Xavier will battle Milford tomorrow in the FAVC/GCL Challenge tomorrow at 2 while the Braves of Talawanda will try to get back on track as they travel to Hamilton.