Andy Pitsilos was clear about what his team was facing when they geared up for Tuesday’s showdown with city rival Freedom.

“It’s a must-win,” said Pitsilos. “If we want to stay in the division race, we can’t go down three games to them.”

That was the scenario for the Hurricanes entering yesterday’s pivotal division matchup, which took place after Press deadlines, and will have ramifications on the direction of the Steel Division’s top-three teams this week.

With Freedom (12-1, 9-1) holding a one-game lead over Easton (10-2, 8-2) and a two-game lead over Liberty (8-4, 7-3) heading into this week, the Pates can either widen their stranglehold on the division lead or see the race become even tighter with this week’s slate of contests.

For Liberty, they’d rather see things tighten up as they prep for three games this week, but Pitsilos would also like for his team to play cleaner ball as they head into the home stretch of the season.

“Sometimes we play poorly and sometimes we play really well,” he said. “We’re actually fortunate to be where we are considering the amount of errors we’ve made and the amount of base running mistakes we’ve made. We just have to play fundamentally sound baseball and that’s one thing we’ve lacked from a consistency standpoint.”

After falling to Easton last week, the Hurricanes bounced back with convincing wins over Dieruff and Bethlehem Catholic, handling both 15-2 and 9-0 respectively, before losing to Hazleton over the weekend 3-0.

“We did a good job hitting against Becahi and Dieruff,” said Pitsilos, “but we didn’t do that against Hazleton. Again, we got to be more consistent.”

And he also needs his team to be ready for this week, as they’ll also take on Allen and Reading.

“If you can’t get up for Freedom, I don’t know what to tell you,” he said about the importance of Tuesday’s contest. “I think our guys will be ready for this. They know how important each game is at this point if we want to have a shot at the division.”