PIEDMONT -- Things were a little disconcerting for the Twin Rivers Royals midway through Monday's first-round game in the Ozark Foothills Conference Tournament.
Naylor pitcher Caleb Urich had only allowed three hits through the first four innings and the fifth-seeded Eagles led by three runs.
Twin River took advantage of Naylor mistakes late and rallied for six runs over the final two innings to advance to the semifinals for the second year in a row with a 7-4 victory.
Twin Rivers (8-12), which will face top-seeded Neelyville at 4 p.m. Tuesday, had nine baserunners in the first four innings with six getting aboard via walks, a hit by pitch or fielder's choices. But the bats were kept silent by Urich who finished with four strikeouts in 4 1/3 innings and had a no-hitter intact through two innings.
"Obviously that is not at all how we had it drawn up and early in the game we couldn't get a hit when we needed it," Twin Rivers coach Jared Stockton said. "Towards the end we finally started timing their pitchers right and it finally paid off."
Naylor coach Jim Carrier was confident with a three-run lead after four innings, especially with the work Urich was doing.
"He's a good pitcher," Carrier said. "I have a lot of confidence in him. He just ran into one bad inning."
Naylor's bad luck began in the bottom of the fifth when the Royal's No. 2 hitter Zac Hardin led off with a double. Tanner Ledbetter followed with an infield single to move Hardin over to third before pulling off a double steal. As Ledbetter took off for second, the Eagles took the bait and tried to throw him out just as Hardin sprinted down the third-base line and slid safely into home to cut the deficit in half.
"That's a normal occurrence it seems like for us," Carrier said. "Today I thought the team that made the most mistakes was going to lose this ballgame and I told them, 'if you minimize your errors and don't let this snowball we should come out on top.' That's how it went for the first four innings, but a couple errors and a couple snowballs later that's the game."
Ledbetter moved up on a passed ball before Urich got Jamie Robards to fly out for out No. 1. Four pitches later Jalen Hicks was hit by a pitch, ending Urich's day on the mound.
Eli Roark replaced him and got a groundout, but not before Ledbetter slid into home to trim the lead to 4-3. Hicks, who stole second before advancing to third on the grounder, scored easily on an error during the next at-bat to tie the game.
Twin Rivers sent eight batters to the plate in the sixth to break things open and capitalized on another Naylor error.
Aaron Mittelstadt started it off with a single before Jackson Siebert's RBI double gave the Royals a lead they never relinquished.
Hardin was intentionally walked one batter later before Ledbetter drew a four-pitch walk. Robards reached on an error to make it 6-4 and Hardin scored on a passed ball to set the final score.
"We were able to put a few hits together," Stockton said. "It's contagious for any team. We were able to string some together and good things happened."
The Eagles played small ball to take the lead early.
After Cody Jones' doubled to open the game and scored on Seth Jones' single, Twin Rivers pitcher Preston Martin retired six straight Eagles.
Naylor got to the right-hander for the final time in the fourth as Jordan Cook singled and scored on Chase Sarabia's base hit. Roark reached on an error before Landon Elledge dropped down a squeeze bunt to extend the lead to 3-1.
The Eagles managed one more run in the fifth as Seth Jones tripled and scored on Sarabia's second single of the night. But Naylor left six runners stranded in the loss and couldn't figure out Martin the rest of the way.
Martin struck out the side in the fifth and finished with 12 in the win. One out away from his third complete game of the season, Martin issued his only walk of the game and was replaced by Hardin, who only needed four pitches to get a game-ending strikeout.
"He's got good stuff and he's a bulldog on the mound," Stockton said of Martin. "We were going to go with the guy that we felt could throw strikes consistently and Preston has been that for us a lot lately. He did exactly what we needed him to do today and now we'll have Zac ready to go tomorrow."