[03/28/02]After playing five games in six days, the St. Aloysius Flashes are probably ready for a day off. With the way they’ve played the last two games, however, the question is, do they want a break?

St. Al blew the game open with a seven-run third inning, hammered out 16 hits and pounded archrival Natchez Cathedral 10-0 on Tuesday. Every St. Al starter had at least one hit, and five had at least two hits. The Flashes have collected 30 hits in their last two games.

The win kept St. Al (13-2, 5-1 Division 7-1A) in the division title chase and set up a big rematch Tuesday at Bazinsky Field with co-leader Bogue Chitto, which handed St. Al its only loss in the division.

“We got up for this game because it was Cathedral, and plus, our backs were against the wall after losing to Bogue Chitto,” said St. Al left fielder Walker Hengst, who went 3-for-4 with a triple and three RBIs. “We always get up for Cathedral.”

Blake Warnock went 1-for-3 with a double and two RBIs for St. Al, and Chad Cox, Dan Muirhead, Jason Brown and Alex Frisbee all had RBI singles. Frisbee was 3-for-4.

Jeremy Davis went 2-for-3 for Cathedral (10-7, 3-1). The Green Wave had six hits and runners on in all but one inning, but couldn’t get any of them past second base.

One Cathedral runner was picked off by Brown (5-0) and another was thrown out by right fielder Charlie Amborn while attempting to go from first to third on a single.

“I was very confident … My defense played great,” Brown said.

St. Al manufactured a run in the bottom of the first when Amborn reached second base on a dropped fly ball, advanced to third on a groundout by Brown and scored on another groundout by Warnock.

After a scoreless second inning, the Flashes blew the game wide open in the third.

St. Al used a leadoff single by Amborn, a botched fielder’s choice, two wild pitches, a sacrifice fly by Warnock and an RBI single by Cox to extend the lead to 4-0. The next five St. Al batters got two-out hits, including Hengst’s RBI triple to the gap in right-center and RBI singles by Frisbee, Muirhead and Brown, as St. Al took an 8-0 lead.

“We saw a tendency where (Cathedral pitcher Chris Norris) wasn’t throwing in on the hands. We told the kids to sit back and wait for a fastball on the black and then drive it,” St. Al coach Joe Graves said. “We more or less dictated what he was going to do.”

Brown kept the Wave at bay over the last three innings, allowing two hits and striking out three, and the Flashes added runs in the fourth and sixth on RBI singles by Hengst.

“We had a bad day, but St. Al had a lot to do with it,” Cathedral coach Ken Beesley said. “It’s just one of those days that we didn’t take care of business. You have to give them credit for taking advantage of it.”