EDMOND — —  

While the rest of the Ada Post 72 players and coaches watched the last few innings of Thursday’s first afternoon game of the Justin Sullivan Memorial Tournament at Oklahoma Christian University, Tanner Bell was behind the first base dugout with his bat, working on an adjustment he hoped would snap him out of a 1-for-9 slump that had coincided with the team’s three-game losing streak.

Bell’s work obviously paid off, because he delivered key hits in the fifth and sixth innings to help the Braves rally from an early 5-0 deficit and beat the Wichita Red Sluggers, 13-8, in Thursday’s second game. The victory set up a showdown at 9 a.m. this morning between Ada (6-3) and the defending state and national champion Oklahoma Outlaws at Oklahoma City University, with the winner grabbing the inside track to the top spot in Pool B at the 16-team, four-pool event. 

The Outlaws, 10-2 winners over Ada at Rose State College in Midwest City Tuesday night, grabbed their share of the top spot in the pool with a victory over Woodward Thursday night. Ada will face Woodward at 2 p.m. today, also at OCU, and the Braves will be back in Edmond to  wrap up pool play against the Southside Shockers at 10 a.m. Saturday at UCO. The tournament’s championship round will be played Sunday at a site to be determined.

“I wasn’t putting my front foot down quick enough,” Bell said after going 3-for-4 and reaching base in all five of his plate appearances Thursday. 

“Tanner just made a little adjustment and it paid off,” Post 72 assistant coach Daniel Wood said after seeing the Braves — who had managed a total of 10 hits in run-rule losses to the Outlaws and Oklahoma City Ambassadors Tuesday night — bang out 16 hits Thursday, including seven for extra bases. “He had some good at-bats today.

“We only scored four runs in our last two games, but we hit some balls hard,” he added. “Today we got hits to fall in, but we’ve told the guys we can’t live and die on home runs because we’re not a home run-hitting team. We just have to keep hitting line drives, and some of them will go out.”  

Bell, hitting in the cleanup spot in the Ada batting order, legged out an infield hit in the first inning and walked in the third, one batter after Matt Johnson had driven home the Braves’ first two runs with a sharp single to left. Ada still trailed 5-2 going to the bottom of the fifth, when Bell blasted a 3-2 pitch from Wichita reliever Nick Rotala to the wall in center field for a leadoff double.

Dylan Tinkler’s ground ball to second moved Bell to third, and after Brandon Maggia walked, Rotala grooved a 1-2 pitch to Blake Logan, who launched it far over the fence in left-center for a game-tying home run. The blast snapped a personal 0-for-10 streak for Logan that had included eight strikeouts, including six in a row. Pinch hitter Moses Isham then gave the Braves their first lead of the game at 6-5, lining an 0-1 pitch just inside the left field foul pole for his first home run of the season. 

Ada starting pitcher Rhett Acker (2-0) allowed five runs and nine hits over the first three innings before settling down to allow just one hit each in the fourth and fifth. But the Sluggers tied the score for the final time in the top of the sixth on one-out singles by Dillon Parker and Robbie Rose and a sacrifice fly by Blaine Birdwell before the Braves roared back to record their biggest rally of the season so far in the bottom of the inning.

Johnson — who, like Logan, entered Thursday’s contest hitless in his previous three games but was 3-for-4 against the Sluggers — started the Ada sixth by drawing a leadoff walk from the third Wichita pitcher, Jonathan Chestnut. Two pitches later, Bell lined an 0-1 offering from Chestnut to the wall in right-center for a triple to score Johnson with the go-ahead run, and Bell scored on Tinkler’s sacrifice fly to right to make it 8-6.

Maggia popped out to shortstop for the second out, but Logan lined a single to left and Isham followed with a no-doubter over the fence in left for his second home run in as many innings to extend the lead to 10-6. The Braves weren’t finished, though.

Dalton Pickering followed Isham’s blast with his second straight base hit, Hunter Marcum — who didn’t have a hit but walked three times and scored twice from the leadoff spot in the Ada lineup — walked, and Jake Sanders made it 11-6 with a hustling, ground-ball RBI double to right-center. 

Marcum scored and Sanders moved to third on an error on the hit, and Sanders scored the seventh and final run in the inning on Johnson’s third hit, a one-hop line drive off Wichita third baseman Angelo Endropara.

The Sluggers came back to score twice off reliever Jordan Boone in the top of the seventh with the help of two walks and two hit batters. But with the bases loaded and one out, Dillon Parker hit into a double play (with his bat splitting into two pieces) started by Johnson at shortstop and turned by Marcum at second base.

Early on, though, the Sluggers (0-4) appeared to be firmly in control. They took a 1-0 lead in the second on Endropara’s RBI single and touched Acker for four runs and five hits — including a two-run single by Rotala, an RBI double by David Warnky and an RBI single from Andrew Newlin — in the third.

Newlin, the Wichita starter, kept the Braves off balance early in the game with a variety of breaking pitches, but he was lifted with one out in the bottom of the fourth after throwing 97 pitches — 43 in the third inning alone, when Ada scored twice and left the bases loaded.

In addition to the three hits apiece from Bell and Johnson, the Braves got two hits each from Maggia, Logan, Isham and Pickering. Newlin went 3-for-3 and Rotala, Endropara, Rose and Tucker Chad added two hits apiece to pace Wichita’s 14-hit attack.