The Albert Lea baseball team snapped a four-game losing streak Monday with a 5-0 win over New Richland-Hartland-Ellendale-Geneva at Hayek Field to conclude the regular season.

The Tigers (11-9, 9-9 Big Nine) rebounded from a slump the team experienced through its previous seven games, going 1-6, but with the win finished above .500 for the first time since 1998.

Junior Luke Grossman’s two-run homer gave Albert Lea a 2-0 lead in the first inning and a little rejuvenation at the plate.

“We haven’t been hitting very good lately, but I think we picked it up this game,” Grossman said.

Another person in need of redemption before the start of the playoffs was junior Jordan Cooper on the mound. In his last start Cooper lasted just 1 1/3 innings and gave up four runs.

Cooper looked strong Monday and delivered one of his best starts of the season. Cooper threw a complete game two-hitter and struck out 11 hitters in the victory.

“Cooper was dominating,” Albert Lea head coach Joe Sczublewski said. “Cooper, when he’s on, he’s tough to hit.”

Cooper cruised through the first three innings, working ahead in the count with first-pitch strikes. He didn’t allow a hit until the fourth inning when Panthers senior catcher Colton Schlaak got a hit to right field with one out.

Copper struck out the side in order in the fifth and had a 1-2-3 sixth inning.

He ran into trouble in the seventh when NRHEG had two runners on and one out, but Cooper retired the next two hitters on strikeouts to end the game.

Junior Jordan Mondeel added an RBI single in the second inning with a two-out hit.

The Tigers scored once more in the fourth when sophomore Aaron Klatt scored on a single from sophomore Carter Kortan.

Senior Logan Kortan crossed the plate in the sixth inning on an sacrifice fly from Klatt that made the game 5-0.

The Panthers stranded five base runners and had an early opportunity to score in the first inning after junior Brett Hagen reached on an error and advanced to second on a fielder’s choice, but NRHEG couldn’t find a clutch hit.

“We were missing that one key hit,” Panthers head coach Jeff Reese said. “We had runners in scoring position. We just can’t get that big hit.”

Albert Lea found the hits when it needed them and left just three runners on while rapping out six hits.

Sczublewski pointed to the Winona game last Thursday as the point in which the team started to pull itself out of its funk and believes going into the playoffs with a win will build some momentum.

“We know if we play up to our ability level, we should be able to compete with anybody in the section level and then comes down to your pitching and defense on any given game,” he said. “If we just get our pitchers to throw strikes and mix up the pitches a little bit and defense fields the routine balls we’ll be right in every game.”

The section playoffs begin Saturday for Albert Lea and the Tigers won’t know their opponent until Wednesday when section seeding is complete.

The Panthers face United South Central Thursday in the first round of the Section 2AA playoffs in Wells.

Albert Lea 5, NRHEG 0

NRHEG 000 000 0 — 0 2 2

Albert Lea 210 101 x — 5 6 2

WP — Jordan Cooper 7 IP, 2 H, 0 R, 0 ER, 2 BB, 11 K

LP — Mitch Akemann 2 IP, 3 H, 3 R, 3 ER, 2 BB, 0 K