Photo by Sam Thiel Marshall’s Zach Allen delivers a pitch during their game against Brookings (S.D.) on Tuesday. Marshall 17U fell to Brookings 20-4 in five innings.

MARSHALL — After exploding on the offensive end the day before, the Marshall Black 17U baseball team looked to keep its momentum going against Brookings (S.D.). But Brookings had a similar gameplan, and broke out the bats to the tune of 19 hits and 20 runs — including a 10-run fourth — for a 20-4 victory over Marshall in five innings Tuesday night.

Marshall coach Mitchell Maxwell said they’ve been able to do a good job of battling back when they need to and showed it again versus Brookings, but felt they mentally checked themselves out of the game, especially in the double-digit run fourth and it cost them.

“I’ve talked with these guys quite a bit about how one of the things that makes them fun to coach is they don’t ever give up. We’ve been in some tight spots and had to battle back before and we did that here but a disappointing part of it is I think we took ourselves out of the game mentally. In the fourth when they had 10 runs, we made a lot of mistakes that hurt us in that inning; after the game I talked with the guys about how there’s a physical and a mental part to this game,” Maxwell said. “Physical mistakes you can handle, those things are going to happen, it’s the mental mistakes in the game and you have to keep yourself mentally sharp and you can’t have those types of mistakes. Our program has prided itself on being mentally sharp with baseball and knowing where to be with the baseball, knowing where to go and what to do and I think we took ourselves out of it mentally and that part was disappointing.”

Brookings took control of the tempo right from the start and never looked back, scoring five runs in its first at-bat. They used a pair of errors, an RBI double, a two-run triple and a wild pitch to plate their runs to take a 5-0 lead. After Marshall couldn’t take advantage of having a pair of baserunners aboard in the bottom of the frame, Brookings kept the offense rolling in the second. The frame was highlighted by a pair of two-run singles to help extend Brookings’ lead to 9-0.

Despite the early deficit, Marshall wouldn’t go down without a fight, as Connor Neubeck led off the bottom of the third with a double before a Zach Allen RBI single gave Marshall its first run of the day. Marshall wasn’t done there, as Jacob Eben drew a walk before Mitchell Bouwman connected on an RBI single. Kadam Brinkman and Zach Leibfried would follow that up with an infield single and an RBI groundout, respectively, to cut the deficit to 9-4.

But Brookings had a quick answer, doing a lot of damage in the fourth with no outs. Brookings used an error and a pair of infield singles to load the bases before back-to-back walks brought in a couple of runs. After an RBI single on the ensuing at-bat, Brookings added two more runs on a walk and a balk to extend its lead to 14-4. Three more runs would come across before the first out of the frame was made, and Brookings then added two more in the inning before a run in the fifth brought it to the 20-4 final.

Neubeck led the way for Marshall with a pair of hits while Allen and Bouwman each added a hit and an RBI and Preston Hoflock, Keaton Maertens and Brinkman each had a hit.

Allen took the loss on the mound, going 1 2/3 innings while allowing nine runs on eight hits and stuck out one.

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Marshall will face Hadley on Thursday at 6 p.m. Maxwell said their biggest takeaway will be just hitting the reset button and come into Thursday’s game refocused and re-energized.

“I just think this is a good enough group and we talked after the game, it’s been a fun group to coach because they never give up and they’re hungry to learn so we just talked about how we need to take this game and put it behind us, think about the things we have done well and grown with this season and take that into Thursday,” Maxwell said.