HILLSBORO, Mo. -- If Ronin Rice wanted to pitch a complete game, he couldn't wait one more batter.
Rice was just under 100 pitches in the top of the seventh inning. With Poplar Bluff leading 4-1 and the tying run at the plate with two outs, Joe Darlin was warmed up and ready to take the mound if Rice didn't take care of Hillsboro's Tyler Isaacson.
Rice did just that, with a routine grounder to short, and the throw to first clinched a trip to the MSHSAA Class 5 District 1 championship game for the Mules.
"It wasn't my best, I wasn't my sharpest, but my defense came through once again. I can't say enough about the defense. Everybody made the plays that they needed to," Rice said.
Poplar Bluff will play Jackson, which beat Northwest 11-1, at 4:30 p.m. Monday in Hillsboro.
In their only meeting this season, Poplar Bluff (19-5) beat Jackson 5-3 in late April.
"Just like we did last time. Good pitching, good defense, put the ball in play and hope for the best," Rice said.
Hillsboro (13-6) stranded eight, including five in scoring position, as Rice used his change up to get out of jams.
He was facing the bases loaded with two outs in the third, but got a groundout to short to keep Hillsboro scoreless.
"I thought he threw well. I'm not going to say he had his greatest stuff today, but he threw well enough to win and our defense played great behind him," Poplar Bluff coach Steven Edwards said. "When we were in jams, that's the pitch we went to (the change up) and it got a lot of pop ups in the middle of the infield."
The Hawks pushed a run across in the sixth and trouble Rice one last time in the seventh after they got a leadoff double and a walk to bring the tying run to the plate with nobody out.
Feeling strong despite his impending pitch count limit, Rice got a high pop up to short, a strikeout and then that groundout to short to earn his sixth win of the season.
He finished with eight hits and four walks against. He struck out two of the first three batters, then nobody until the seventh inning.
He also helped himself at the plate by driving in two runs and going 1 for 3 with a walk.
He helped put Poplar Bluff on the scoreboard after drawing a one-out walk in the second inning, and his courtesy runner Wyatt Rowland scored on Mason Libla's hard double that hit the top half of the tall Hillsboro fence.
In the sixth, Rice hit a textbook groundout to the right side in order to score the run from third, who happened to be leadoff hitter Jared Moses.
Moses stayed in the game despite taking a bump in the second inning. The third baseman caught a low throw from first, knelt for the catch, with Hillsboro's Isaiah Beck sliding into the bag at the same time. Beck caught Moses on the hip, Moses believes, with his elbow.
"At first it hurt a little bit," Moses said. "It hit me right in my left hip."
The senior showed the ball to the umpire, securing the inning-ending out, and took a moment before being helped to his feet by his concerned teammates and coaches.
"With all the adrenaline, it didn't start hurting until about the sixth or the seventh inning. I promised my coach that I would fight through it," Moses said.
Cox, Turner Fritts, and Michael Anagnostopoulos each had two hits.
The Mules finished with 10 hits and stranded seven runners in scoring position. Of those 10 hits, Tyson Cox's single in the sixth inning with nobody on base was the only one with two outs.
"We had our chances. We had guys on third or second with one out two times and we just didn't cash in," Edwards said. "It could have very well went the other way if they got a hit in the gap or something, but it was meant for us to win this ball game and our boys came through and won it."