By BRIAN RAMSEY | OBU Sports Network

HOT SPRINGS — The Ouachita Baptist University baseball team erased an early deficit and rallied to win in convincing fashion on Monday night at Majestic Park against its cross-street rival Henderson State University by a final score of 13-4.

Monday’s game was the first of five games between the Tigers (27-10) and Reddies (23-16) over the next three weeks. The two squads meet again on Tuesday night at HSU’s Clyde Berry Field.

Ouachita opened the scoring in the top of the first inning on an RBI double by Isaac Nowell. The Reddies answered with four runs in the bottom of the frame to take the lead. Neither team scored in the second before the Tigers broke through for seven runs in the top of the third inning to take control of the game, highlighted by a grand slam by Jaxon Chaney for his team-leading ninth homerun of the season.

The Tigers added four more runs in the fourth, highlighted by a two-run double from Cade Burris.

Meanwhile, Tiger reliever Jonathan Weiss (2-0) shut down the Reddie offense with 6.1 scoreless innings. He gave up five hits, while striking out eight and walking only two.

Dustin Bermudez led the Tiger offense with a 3-for-5, two-RBI performance. Jud Arrington and CW Schrader also had multi-hit games with two each.

Ouachita scored its 13 runs on 13 hits, marking the 12th time this season to have double-digit runs and the 19th time to have double-digit hits. The Tigers move to 18-1 this season when getting at least 10 hits, 15-0 when getting at least 11 hits and 18-0 when getting at least seven runs.