NATCHEZ &8212; The schedule, as it turned out, couldn&8217;t have fallen more into Cathedral&8217;s favor.

This is the kind of game the Green Wave needed heading into the playoffs. For a team that has spent a good portion of the season searching for an identity at the plate, Wednesday&8217;s 5-4 win over a good Vidalia team gave the team a sizeable boost to end the regular season and prepare for next week&8217;s opening-round tournament.

And in the annual rivalry series between the two established programs, any win is going to be hard to come by.

&8220;We needed that big time,&8221; said CHS senior Charlie Lane, who had two hits and scored two runs. &8220;We&8217;re going to the playoffs, and it&8217;s a big boost. We were ready for sure. That&8217;s Vidalia. We always are ready to play Vidalia.

&8220;We had a real good practice yesterday and focused on a lot on some little stuff that we haven&8217;t done all year. We knew we could beat this team. We just did the job.&8221;

None of it, however, came easy, and fans at Chester Willis Field had to stay to the very end with the Vikings ending the game with the tying run on base. But it marked a night of frustration for the Vikings (17-5), who are battling injuries heading into the home stretch of the regular season before the playoff brackets are announced April 25.

The Vikings left runners on base in every inning but the first. Left-hander Patrick McDonough yielded a single to open the seventh to Will Thomas before getting two strikeouts and a flyout to right to end the game.

&8220;Five of the seven innings we had runners in scoring position,&8221; Vidalia head coach Johnny Lee Hoffpauir said. &8220;We couldn&8217;t get the key hit. Of course, we&8217;re in the biggest park we&8217;ll play in. If we play in Vidalia, we probably have six home runs. The problem was we weren&8217;t in Vidalia. It was going to come down to the team who made the most mistakes, and we made them.&8221;

McDonough got a huge strikeout of Tyler Bruce right after Thomas reached base for the first out, and he did the same with a strikeout of Jordan Brewer in the sixth to leave Cameron Ainsworth stranded at second.

McDonough had better control of his curveball as the game went on and got some key outs late despite some tough spots. Trey Keith lined a shot that was foul just by inches down the third-base line before flying out to Alex Middleton in right for the second out in the seventh.

&8220;We got (Brewer) with a curveball, and we came back and got Bruce with a fastball,&8221; Beesley said. &8220;That was big. That was probably the biggest out right there. Their top five batters are some of the best we&8217;ll see. Patrick battled. He didn&8217;t have his best stuff tonight, but he did a good job of keeping us in the game.&8221;

It was the mistakes on the defensive end that may have loomed the largest for the Vikings, who committed two errors in the fifth to allow Cathedral to score three runs tand take the lead.

And the two errors couldn&8217;t have come at worse times. After Lane doubled Preston Edwards over to third and McDonough reached on a fielder&8217;s choice to load the bases, an error on Zack Calhoun&8217;s bunt scored Edwards to trim the lead to 4-3.

Vidalia pitcher got a strikeout for the second out before a ground ball off the bat of Kole Junkin found its way through on an error to score Lane and McDonough for a 5-4 CHS lead.