Barely four batters in Saturday, the feeling of an oncoming rout was palpable.

Without taking more than a handful of pitches, the Episcopal baseball team had smacked two singles and a rope of a two-run home run to the inviting left-field corner against Austin St. Andrew’s in a Southwestern Preparatory Conference game.

“We just wanted to hit the ball up the middle, wait back on his curveball and hit line drives,” said Episcopal’s Charles Mann, who clubbed the afore-mentioned home run and added an RBI double later in the 11-run inning. “He was mixing a lot of pitches but he threw a few fastballs in and we hammered though.”

The Knights made quick work of St. Andrew’s, breaking the game open with seven hits in the first inning to cruise to a 15-4 victory in five innings.

Considering the final score, to say it was a game Episcopal needed to win might be surprising. But St. Andrew’s entered with only one loss in the SPC’s South Zone, and a win Saturday would have given it the tiebreaker with Episcopal – for now – ahead of the postseason tournament May 1 and 2 in Fort Worth.

The Knights improved to 23-2. Their only losses have been to downstreet foe Bellaire and Fort Bend Hightower, with victories against College Station A&M Consolidated, Bryan and Deer Park among others.

“We’re pretty balanced,” said Episcopal coach Chris Russ, who started seven seniors Saturday. “Most of them (the seniors) have been on top of their game, whether it’s been pitching, defense or hitting. We have a formula and they buy into it. They execute and we’ve been winning. …

“I’ve said before that maybe this isn’t the most talented team I’ve had here, but the sum is greater than the parts.”

The “formula” is comprised of defense, pitching and timely hitting.

“We have to get the table set,” said Russ, who helped found the program in 1986 and now is in the first season of his second stint as coach after a three-year hiatus. “For the most part they’ve done it all year long. We’ve only had a few struggles, but when they have to gear it up they gear it up.”

The only reason most Knights didn’t have multiple hits is because several subs were inserted by the bottom of the second. Episcopal sent 15 batters to the plate in the first.

Drew Webber led off with a walk, stole two bases and scored on Andrew Sterling’s single. Paul Knowlton followed with a single before Mann’s homer.

“I thought it was gonna be a double,” he said.

Two singles and two errors later, Sterling clubbed a no-doubt homer over the right-center field gap for a 9-0 lead. Knowlton singled and scored on Mann’s double; Mann scored on a Jimmy Bailey single.

That was more than enough support for starter Austin Carden, who improved to 10-1 on the season. He was mostly untouched until the fourth, when Nic Belisle’s two-run double broke the shutout.

St. Andrew’s tacked on two more runs in the fifth.

“Every time I step on the mound I feel like I have a ton of run support,” Carden said. “After the first inning, I have an (11-) run lead and it’s not too hard to pitch after that. … They (couldn’t) hit an 11-run homer. I just had to throw strikes.”

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