FLOWOOD — University Christian put on a small ball clinic Monday night and left its showdown with Porters Chapel standing tall.

The Flames used six infield hits and a couple of timely errors to go toe-to-toe with PCA in a short-range slugfest. Finally, Brandon Waltman’s sharp grounder through a drawn-in infield capped a three-run rally in the bottom of the seventh that gave University Christian a wild, weird 10-9 victory.

“I’ve been trying to get our guys do more base hit bunting all year. Our guys saw tonight what can happen when you do that. They small-balled us to death,” PCA coach Jerry Bourne said. “It’s hard to make plays when the field is wet like this. They took advantage of it.”

The game, essentially, was the first in a best-of-three series between PCA (13-6, 10-1) and University Christian (14-8, 11-0) for the District 5-A championship. The teams meet again tonight at 6 in Vicksburg and, if PCA wins, will play again Thursday at Hinds Community College in Raymond. Both teams have already locked up playoff spots.

The tiebreaker game was decided upon by a vote of the district’s coaches in the offseason. Previously, a run differential tiebreaker was used.

“That’s good. I don’t like the run differential deal. Let’s duke it out,” Bourne said. “This is for first place in the district. Going in as a 1 or a 2 seed are very different things. A lot of it is for pride. I want to prove we can beat these guys and that we’re a championship team. That’s what championship teams do.”

Although both teams are sure to contend for the MAIS Class A championship, neither seemed able to hit a ball out of the infield Monday. Despite combining for 20 hits and 19 runs, they hit a total of 13 balls out of the infield. UCS’ pitchers walked 10 batters, while PCA committed five errors.

PCA scored four runs in the fourth inning — on four walks, a hit batter, an infield single and a sacrifice fly — to take a 5-1 lead. University Christian came back with two walks, a bunt single and an RBI double by Adam McPhail to cut it to 5-4 in the bottom of the fifth.

And then things got really crazy.

PCA loaded the bases with one out in the sixth, but only managed to score one run. That opened the door for UCS, which used a pair of bunt singles and two throwing errors to score three times in the bottom half and take a 7-6 lead.

Figuring if you can’t beat them, join them, the Eagles went the small ball route in the seventh. Richie Bufkin reached on a swinging bunt and Cameron Upton beat out a sacrifice attempt, then both moved into scoring position on a passed ball. With two outs, catcher Jarad Tompkins legged out another infield hit —PCA’s fourth of the game — on a slow roller. The throw to first was dropped, allowing both runners to score to put PCA back in front 8-7.

Tompkins later stole second and scored on Montana McDaniel’s RBI single, but the two-run lead proved fleeting.

University Christian’s first two hitters reached in the bottom of the seventh, advanced to scoring position on a passed ball and scored on Landon Perkins’ single to right to tie it. A hit batter and a booted double play ball loaded the bases with one out and forced Bourne to pull his infield in. Waltman then delivered the winning hit through the right side to finally end the three-hour marathon.

“We’ve got to make plays on the infield. That’s been the story of every loss we’ve had, has been errors, and that happened to us that inning,” Bourne said. “Give credit to those guys (UCS). They flat-out played gritty.”

The game-winning hit was a bit of redemption for Waltman. He came on to pitch in relief in the top of the seventh and gave up the go-ahead runs.

“Sometimes that’s the way it works out,” UCS coach Jonathan Broome said. “You get a chance to fix what went wrong in the beginning.”