Neelyville's Mitchell Dennis gets back to first base as Clearwater's Dan Smith gets a pickoff throw from pitcher Jake Hime Thursday afternoon in Neelyville. (Alex Abate/DAR) [Click to enlarge]

By ALEX ABATE ~ Sports Writer

NEELYVILLE -- Clearwater was happy to open the floodgates Thursday afternoon.

The Tigers scored eight runs in the bottom of the third inning on the way to a 13-0 win over host Neelyville in five innings.

"This was just a real good team effort," Athletic Director Louis Bell said, filling in for Justin Dobbins, who served a one-game suspension for being ejected from Wednesday's game.

Clearwater (6-3) had four hits in the first two innings before letting loose in the third.

"The first couple innings, we had guys on base," Clearwater's Jake Hime said. "It just takes a couple in a row (to get going)."

Kendall Fay and Hime started the third with walks before Chris Kirkpatrick unloaded on a pitch and sent it over the left-field wall to make it 3-0.

"These guys haven't played as well as they are capable of playing lately and we are struggling a little bit," Bell said. "Once they got relaxed, they just played after that."

After Kirkpatrick's blast, Dan Smith followed suit with a home run, this one to center field, to make it 4-0. Andrew D'Amico added to the RBI barrage on a ground out and with one out, Jordan Devenport doubled to center field to score Brandon Smith, which made it 6-0. Devenport later scored on a single by Kyle Randolph and Randolph scored the final run of the inning as Smith walked.

"We got some timely hits," Bell said. "We had quite a few guys that stepped up and hit the ball for us. The middle and bottom of our order did as much or more than the top of the order did."

The big Clearwater inning really rattled Neelyville and it just couldn't answer back.

"We just didn't show up to play ball today is the main thing I seen," Neelyville coach Jared Beaird said. "We weren't up for the game. We just forgot to play ball."

The Tigers got one run in the fourth inning and four more in the fifth to set the final score.

Jake Hime pitched all five innings for Clearwater to get the win. He allowed just three hits and had three strikeouts.

"I was just trying to hit my spots today and my arm wasn't feeling as good as it has in the past," Hime said. "I was just trying to throw the ball to the

"My arm started to get a little loose around the third or fourth (inning)," Hime said. "Plus, when you jump out on somebody like that and put eight runs on them in an inning, I am sure they get down a little bit.

"I am just trying to keep doing my job up there and make them not do theirs."

Neelyville got a read on Hime but just couldn't string any hits together, Beaird said.

"We just didn't hit the ball at all," Beaird said. "I felt like we had a couple hard hit balls to right field in the third or fourth inning but the guy was there and we just couldn't get nothing to fall."

Pitcher Jordan Thomas got the loss for Neelyville, he allowed four runs over twoplus innings. Austin Russom allowed three runs before Clint Crawley allowing one run.

plate and let my defense work for me."

Neelyville (3-4) got a runner to second base in the second inning but didn't get one past first the rest of the way.