The events of the first inning seemed awfully familiar to Jeff Stoehr.

This time, though, his JC Brager team was the beneficiary of the bad bounces, hops and drops.

Brager scored six runs in the first inning, then held on for a 6-5 victory against U- Stop Saturday in the Mike Peterson Baseball Tournament at Sherman Field.

"We've been on the reverse side of that. We've seen our share of bloop hits dropping in," Stoehr said of his team made up of players from Lincoln Southeast. "In the dugout, we were all saying that it was finally our turn to have the good things happen to us."

Travis Miller reached on an error, advanced on a wild pitch and scored on a single by Griffin DePriest. Jaydee Jurgensen followed with a single and Will Herman reached on another error, allowing a run to score. Jordan Kirk doubled in a run, Taylor Darlington tripled in two runs, then scored on a single by Jake Salomons.

"We are 12-15 and eight of our losses are by one run. We got thumped a couple of times, but for the most part, we've been right there in games," Stoehr said. "We got good pitching today. We have all season, but we'll boot one here or there. Today we made the plays and we got some timely hits."

U-Stop (East) got back in the game in the third inning with four runs. Bryce Bostwick hit a two-run home run and after Trevor Young singled, Alex Lux tripled to drive him in and scored on a wild pitch. But winning pitcher Jory Keuten got a groundout to get out of the jam.

Lux hit a towering solo home run to lead off the seventh and U-Stop threatened when Dustin Olson doubled. But DePriest came on and got the final two outs for the save.

Michael Moss, who took the loss for U-Stop, gave up just two hits after the first-inning explosion by Brager.

"Michael really pitched well. We just gave them some extra outs and they hit well enough to take advantage," said U-Stop coach Mike Sterns.

Ryly Jane Hambleton at 473-7314 or rhambleton@journalstar.com