Pleasant Home’s Ethan King pitched five innings and had 13 strikeouts to shut down the McKenzie Tigers in Pleasant Home Tuesday to help his team earn a 15-0 area win, its first area victory of the season.

King allowed two walks and one hit.

“Ethan did a great job pitching,” Pleasant Home coach Bradley Stephens said. “He’s coming off his arm being sore and he looked good coming back from it. We tried putting him in two games ago and he only could put in two innings. To let him go five today, that lets me know he’s getting better.”

The bats started to come around in the second inning when Pleasant Home’s Ethan Soles hit a two-run double to bring in Fernando Torres and Josh Sutton.

Stephen Davis scored on a passed ball before Soles scored on a two-run triple from Blake Herman. Herman later scored on a passed ball.

The Eagles (5-6, 1-0 in Class 1A, Area 3) scored one run in the third inning on a passed ball.

At their last at bat in the fourth inning, the Eagles managed to go through their lineup, scoring nine runs on six hits.

Syd Newby started off with a walk and quickly stole second and third base. Soles hit an RBI single to score Newby.

Then, King singled to score Soles before Torres later hit an RBI single to score Herman.

King scored on an error to make it 8-0.

The last seven runs of the game were scored through passed balls, an RBI single from Soles and an RBI double from Herman.

Stephens said the play from his team was “OK,” but the team is still working hard.

“We played OK,” Stephens said. “Our bats were kind of slow coming around, but we’re coming along. Defense today backed (King) up.”

Herman was 2-for-4 with one triple, one double, two RBIs and two walks; King was 2-for-4 with two singles, one RBI and one walk; Torres was 2-for-3 with two singles, one RBI and one walk; and Soles was 2-for-3 with one single, one double, three RBIs and one walk.

Pleasant Home will host Straughn next Tues., March 24, in a doubleheader at 4 p.m.

“We’ve got to bring our ‘A’ game,” Stephens said. “Straughn’s a good team. We’ve struggled against them so far this year. Hopefully, we can play good defense and the bats will come around. We’re going to practice hard for the rest of this week.”