By By SCOTT NOVAK / Niles Daily Star
NILES – Visiting Dowagiac split a pair of games with the Niles Nuts Tuesday evening at Niles High School.
Dowagiac won the first game 4-3, while Niles took the second game 9-1.
In the opening game, Dowagiac squeezed home the winning run in the top of the seventh after rallying from a 3-0 deficit.
Niles scored a run in the second and two in the fourth inning to open up a 3-0 advantage.
Dowagiac put up four runs in the top of the fifth, thanks in part to a couple of Niles errors.
Alex Miller delivered the winning run with a perfectly executed squeeze play.
Justin Gordy, Aaron Blaske, Cody Carnell and Tremail Butcher all scored in the fifth inning.
Butcher drove in a run.
Cody Cox pitched the fifth inning, retiring Niles in order to earn the victory in relief of starter Tanner Melvin, who allowed three runs on five hits with three strikeouts.
Asaad Ali took the loss for Niles despite limiting Dowagiac to one hit.
In the second game, Mikie Simpson and David Garner held Dowagiac to four hits. Simpson, who started, was the winning pitcher.
Niles scored three runs in each of the first three innings.
Dowagiac's lone run came in the fifth inning.
Jason Turner, Adam Roach, Cox and Butcher all singled for Dowagiac.
Cox took the loss, allowing eight hits with four strikeouts in three innings of work. Gordy pitched the fourth inning.
No Niles statistics were available.
"In game one, Tanner did a super job of keeping the Niles hitters off balance and gave us a chance for our final inning heroics," Dowagiac coach Bryan Henry said. "Game one was by far our biggest winner of the summer to date. In game two, we were flat overpowered by Simpson and Garner and we didn't play very well defensively."