The beat goes on for Hamilton baseball. Or should it be the beat-down goes on. The Huskies rolled to their ninth straight victory Wednesday afternoon with a 10-1 win over Centennial in a Division I contest at Centennial.

Hamilton coach Mike Woods was eagerly anticipating the matchup with his ace Zane Strand going against Centennial's standout senior  southpaw Chaz Montoya. It was a long awaited challenge in Woods mind.

"We've played a lot of our games in a tournament and you don't always see the best pitching," Woods said. "I knew we were facing a top guy today."

Hamilton (9-0, 4-0 power ranking games) showed its coach they're able to get to any pitcher at the moment. The Huskies scored twice in the first against the lean-hard-throwing Montoya. Cole Bellinger's RBI double and another by Logan Boyer accounted for the early strike.

In each of the next three innings, Hamilton added on. Drew Swift drove in a run in the second with a triple. The Huskies tacked on three more in the third courtesy of a Boyer sacrifice fly, and a two-run single by Jake Desiderio. Doubles by Brayden Merritt and Nick Brueser made it 7-0 after the Huskies were through batting in the fourth. 

Montoya, who was 5-2 last  season with a 1.33 earned-run average, went five innings. He allowed nine hits, seven runs (six earned), walked one and fanned four. Seven of the nine hits he gave up were for extra bases. Three Huskies had multi-hit games -- Swift (2-3, 3 RBI), Brueser (2-3, RBI) and Keaton Glover (2-4, RBI). Boyer and Desiderio had two RBI each.

"Our guys were up for challenge," Woods said. "We saw Montoya last year, and I know he pitched for the junior (Arizona) Sunbelt team last summer. He's a good one. We're swinging it good, and doing it all up and down the lineup."

Not to be forgotten in Hamilton's early assault on its opponents is the Huskies' pitching. Strand, at 6-foot-4, 215-pounds, showed he is one of the best in the state. He notched his third win in as many starts. He pitched  5 1/3 innings of four-hit ball, walked one and struck out seven. He did allow his first run, which covers 15 1/3 innings of work.

Hamilton has outscored opponents, 95-10, thus far making  Wednesday's win  pretty much an average outing. Its pitchers -- nine have thrown at least two innings -- have a collective 0.76 ERA. They've struck out 47 batters and walked five in 55 innings.

Jake Castaldo led Centennial (4-7, 1-4 power-ranking games) with two hits and Tanner Bland  delivered the lone RBI for the Coyotes with a fourth-inning double.