A wild regular season series between the United South Central and New Richland-Hartland-Ellendale-Geneva baseball teams turned into an even wilder section playoff game Thursday in Wells.

The Rebels (11-10) and Panthers (10-11) split the regular season matchups, USC won the first 11-6 and NRHEG won the second 10-0 in five innings, but none of that mattered when the two rivals hit the field Thursday in their Section 2AA first round playoff game.

The fourth-seeded Rebels scored four unearned runs in the third inning to knock off the fifth-seeded Panthers 5-2 to advance to the next round of the playoffs where they will meet Montgomery-Lonsdale in Montgomery.

“If you were going to tell me it was going to be a 5-2 game, I wouldn’t have believed you, but it’s a good rivalry between two neighboring towns,” said USC head coach Pat Frank.

The wildness started in the bottom of the third inning with the Rebels trailing 2-1.

Colton Schlaak relieved NRHEG starter Brett Hagen and struck out the side, but two dropped third strikes and two errors allowed USC to take advantage and score four runs for a 5-2 lead.

“Kind of the story of our season,” said Panthers head coach Jeff Reese. “It seems like once we make one error, it’s contagious.”

The two teams nearly combined for more errors than hits (nine errors, 12 hits), and USC made mistakes as well, but was able to limit their damage.

NRHEG had base runners in six of the seven innings and stranded nine runners in the game.

“We were starting to swing the bats better, too,” Reese said. “There again we hit some shots at them.”

Rebels starter Nick Fure was a high wire act throughout the game, balancing his way in and out of jams. In the third Schlaak reached on an error and advanced to third with two outs, but Fure retired the next batter on a called third strikes.

In the fourth the Panthers had two runners on but Fure got Brett Hagen to fly out to left field where Anthony Stenzel made a nice running catch.

NRHEG tried to start a rally in the seventh when Peterson and Schlaak reached on back-to-back singles with two outs, but Fure fielded a comebacker to end the game.

“Nick threw a nice game,” Frank said. “He had one bad inning but settled down and did a great job to put us in a position to win the ball game.”

It appeared the game might be decided quickly in the first inning after Payden Peterson hit a two-run shot to left field to give NRHEG a quick 2-0 lead. The Panthers continued to threaten in the first with Colton Schlaak reaching on an error and advancing to third while Matt Tomsche reached on a base hit and stole second to give NRHEG runners in scoring position with two outs, but a groundout to third ended the inning.

USC got one back in the bottom half when William Huper scored on an RBI single from A.J. Dreyer.

“Both teams made mistakes but we capitalized on them,” Frank said. “We made mistakes but they didn’t capitalize on them.”

USC 5, NRHEG 2

NRHEG 200 000 0 — 2 6 5

USC 104 000 x — 5 6 4

WP — Nick Fure 7 IP, 6 H, 2 R, 2 ER, 1 BB, 6 K

LP — Brett Hagen 2 IP, 6 H, 4 R, 0 ER, 2 BB, 0 K