If you talk to Northampton head baseball coach Mick Sugra about his sport, you are almost guaranteed to hear the refrain, “Good pitching beats good hitting.”

That mantra was proven true Tuesday afternoon in Nazareth as reigning EPC MVP Ryan Petruska struck out 12 K-Kids over 5 1/3 innings of work to lead the Blue Eagles to an 8-6 win over Northampton.

The Kids got on the board in the top when Aidan Sugra and Brady Simock had back-to-back singles out of the two and three holes. Sugra came home to score on a Nazareth throwing error trying to catch him napping at third base.

From there Petruska struck 11 of the next 18 batters, walking a batter in the second, third, and fourth innings, and surrendering in a single to Casey Williams in the fifth.

Meanwhile, the Blue Eagles put up 2 runs in the first inning, one in the third, two in the fourth, and three in the fifth to take an 8-1 lead into the sixth inning.

At this point, Petruska ran out of gas. Four of the first five Kids’ batters in the sixth reached base safely, causing Nazareth to pull their ace lefty after 98 pitches. Williams had a 2-run double and Sugra had an RBI ground out as part of a 5-run rally to get Northampton back into the game at 8-6.

A leadoff walk in the top of the seventh inning brought the tying run to the plate, but the K-Kids were unable to push any runs across.

“Petruska was on today. He’s a D1 lefty arm and he was on point today. Then obviously we scored a couple of runs there and they went to their other guy (Carson Steingall). That kid’s a sophomore throwing 95. He’s going to be another D1 arm. You tip your cap to those guys, they got the W. They earned it. They played a little bit better than we did,” conceded Mick Sugra.

The loss drops the Kids’ record for the year to 12-5 overall and 9-5 in the EPC.

Northampton has two conference games left - Thursday against Freedom and then Friday against Parkland.

The EPC tournament starts next Thursday. A variety of scenarios are still in play for the K-Kids. One win will get them into the playoffs as a road team in the quarterfinals. Two wins could see them host a quarterfinal game, if the other league results break their way. Two losses would likely put them into a tiebreaker situation for the final berth.