Souhegan's Keegan Burke gets tagged out trying to steal third in a cloud of dust by Hollis Brookline's Zackery Lussier duirng Saturday's 5-2 Sabers win in Amherst. (Telegraph photo by TOM KING)

AMHERST – It’s becoming a great local high school baseball rivalry, as under the radar as it might be.

You want entertainment, go to a Souhegan-Hollis Brookline High School baseball game. It’s always intense and Saturday’s well-attended 5-2 Sabers win, in which the Sabers were three outs away from a combined no-hitter, was no different.

It followed a Cavaliers win earlier in the week, but yesterday was HB’s first loss of the season (7-1 in Division II).

“I’d like to see a seven game series, is what I’d like to see,” said HB coach James Sartell. “It’s one of these teams.”

“It’s been phenomenal,” Souhegan coach Tom Walker said, his team now 9-2. “The way we’re playing, the way they’re playing, it was a great week of baseball. It’s nice to play back-to-back. Earlier in the season I didn’t want to see anybody back-to-back, but now that we’re into it, let’s go.”

The Sabers got into it in the second inning off Cavs sophomore starter Charlie Hale, with Dylan Dufour smacking a first pitch solo homer to left center to tie the game at 1. Souhegan proceeded to score two more times in the frame, with pitcher Kyan Bagshaw helping himself out with a double, and a throwing error on the play plating Saber Nick Wilson with the second run. Bagshaw scored on a Wil Jaques sac fly to make it 3-1.

The Sabers picked up two big insurance runs in the fifth off HB lefty reliever Padraig MacSeain without hitting the ball out of the infield. Two walks, an infield hit (Nolan Colby) a passed ball and a Colin Burke RBI groundout did the trick.

But this was not easy by any means. If it weren’t for two big deep catches by right fielder Wilson the teams could still be out there. The bigger one was when Wilson ran down Paul Vachon’s deep fly with two on and two out in the top of the fifth. That ball gets behind him, it’s tied 3-3 and Vachon is likely standing on third.

“If the kid doesn’t make that catch, we’ve got a tied game,” Sartell said.

“Wilson made a phenomenal catch, two of them,” Walker said, noting another in the seventh. “Our defense has been spectacular, we work hard at it.”

Meanwhile, Bagshaw didn’t let two walks and a double steal for an HB run in the first bother him. The junior lefty tossed five innings of hitless ball, striking out four with blemishes being four walks and two hit batsman.

“We’ve been working on everybody’s mental psyche on the mound, and Kyan has been really able to control his emotions,” Walker said. “He did a phenomenal job, battling through a couple of rough situations that a couple of years ago probably would’ve gotten under his skin.”

Then the Sabers went to reliever Dylan Dufour, who has 25 strikeouts with one walk, his first one yesterday in the seventh after giving up the only hit of the day for HB – a solo homer to left off the bat of Aidan Dufoe.

Still, Cavs pitching held the Sabers to just four hits.

“This is what it should feel like when you hit the ball two or three times, that’s a baseball game,” Sartell said. “We’ve got really young pitching behind (Brandon) Hsu, sophomore pitching, and you’re seeing it. “They’ll make adjustments along the way. Giving up five runs to a team with this offense is nothing to shake at.”

We want to see more. There’s a question whether there’d be regional seeding by record or blind draw come tourney time, and you’d love to see these two teams meet in a later round.

“It’d be a shame,” Walker said, “if one of us knock the other out early if we were to match up.”

Either way, you get a sense there’ll be Game 3.

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