If anything can be learned for the future opponents of the Lemont baseball team, its that you simply don’t want to give it extra opportunities.

Because if Saturday’s 15-4 win over Lincoln-Way Central is any indication, Lemont will make you pay.

Extra chances weren’t frequent early in the game, but when they materialized Lemont was ready to pounce.

After Lincoln-Way Central scrounged out an unearned run in its half of the first inning, Lemont was scuffling to find its footing against Knights starter Alex Panos.

Panos went through the Lemont (3-1) lineup the first time allowing just a single to Zane Schneider, who was caught stealing moments after the hit and a relatively harmless two-out walk to Cannon Madej.

But after getting the first two outs quickly in the third, Grady Garofalo blooped a single that was just out of reach of both the Knights infielder and outfielder converging on the play. It was one of those 50/50 plays that could have gone either way, but the sting of not making the play burned a few minutes later when Brett Tucker swatted a two-run homer over the left field fence.

“I was just looking for a fastball to hit,” said Tucker, who reached base four times. “I know he gave me a few curveballs in that at-bat. But it was a 3-2 count and I was thinking fastball and I got it.”

Lemont stretched the lead to 4-1 after Ethan Kelby provided a sacrifice fly in the fourth and Sean Murray crunched an RBI double in the fifth.

But Lemont elected to remove sophomore starter Dylan Jones at that point after having thrown a number of pitches, most of which were pretty effective.

He struck out eight over four innings of work, allowing just an unearned run.

“It’s still early and he’s only a sophomore,” Lemont coach Brian Storako said. “So we want to keep him low, under a count. Yeah, he was ready to go out, probably had a couple more in him but we just had to shut it down.”

Lincoln-Way Central (3-1) was happy to see Jones depart. A two-run triple by David Schultz pulled the Knights within 4-3 in its half in the fifth. And after Lemont used a series of free passes to stretch its lead to 5-3, Lincoln-Way Central turned the same trick using three walks and single from Dev Sharma to get the run back and make it 5-4 through six innings.

Then things went completely off the rails for the Knights. The first eight Lemont batters reached base (three hits, three walks, two errors) and all eight of those batters scored along with two more as the 10-run frame completely dispelled the thought of a close game.

“It was great to see because we talk all week about battling and competing and stuff like that and putting ourselves in a position to succeed,” Storako said. “And its kind of been the opposite of that for us in the first three games. So today it was good to see, taking advantage of things when we could.”

https://www.shawlocal.com/the-herald-news/2026/03/07/benet-makes-key-plays-when-it-needs-to-in-topping-bolingbrook/