WINTHROP – The Winthrop Ramblers finished strong in Friday’s Mountain Valley Conference clash with arch-rival Monmouth. They’d like to make that the theme for their season, too.

Forrest Dwyer tossed a complete game five-hitter and Dave Ricker belted a homer and drove in three runs as the Ramblers clinched a spot in the MVC title game with a 7-3 win over the Mustangs.

“We looked at this week at the beginning of the season thinking it was going to be a tough week,” said Winthrop coach Mark Fortin, whose team edged Dirigo, 3-2, earlier in the week. “It’s nice to beat the arch-rival. They had their ace (Eric Murphy) on the mound and they’re pretty confident when they’ve got that Murphy kid up there.”

Dwyer struck out eight, including the final batter in each of the last six innings, and walked five on 111 pitches. Monmouth touched him for all three runs in the fifth.

“We thought his best two innings were the last two,” Fortin said of his ace southpaw. “We weren’t happy with his location at the beginning of the game, and we weren’t happy with his location in the middle of the game, and then he really came on. We’re not sure with him pitching on seven days rest if we’re giving him too much time off between starts and he’s just not sharp enough. But that’s not going to be a problem (in the postseason).”

Winthrop (12-1) jumped on Murphy for an unearned run in the first, then opened up a 5-0 lead in the second on RBI singles by Easton Morang and Brandon Dupuis and a two-run single by Jordan Conant (two hits). The Ramblers didn’t hit the ball particularly hard, but they took advantage of two Monmouth errors and stole five bases in the first two frames to keep the pressure on.

“Good teams do that, they find the holes, they get the breaks,” Monmouth coach Eric Palleschi said. “Murphy wasn’t really his sharp self. It was a tough situation where we had a guy behind the plate that hasn’t caught before. We got down 5-0, but we didn’t quit.”

Devin Robbins relieved Murphy to start the fourth and held the Ramblers scoreless for his first two innings to give the Mustangs (8-5) cause for hope. Ronnie Hobson (two hits) got the first Monmouth hit off Dwyer in the third, but the offense didn’t get going until Josh Boisvert led off the fifth by reaching on a grounder to second that ate up Bryan Lawson. Hobson drove Boisvert in with a triple and scored on a wild pitch. Mack Tozier’s two-out RBI single cut the deficit to 5-3.

Ricker made the Ramblers breathe easier in the sixth by sending a 1-0 hanger from Robbins down the line and over the fence in left. Palleschi argued briefly that the ball was foul, but to no avail.

“We had the timely hitting the first couple of innings and then we couldn’t get the timely hitting after that, and then Robbins came in with that little wrinkle and got everybody double-clutching,” Fortier said. “We definitely felt a little more comfortable after that home run.”