Chris Betts homered and Ford Proctor had a three-hit night, but the Bowling Green Hot Rods couldn’t hold off a ninth-inning rally by the Kane County Cougars in a 6-5 walk-off loss Wednesday night in Geneva, Ill.

The Hot Rods are 56-39 overall and 17-8 in the second half with the second game of the three-game series scheduled Thursday for a 6:30 p.m. CDT start.

Kane County took a 2-0 lead in the bottom of the first inning before Bowling Green evened the score in the fifth against Cougars starter Levi Kelly. Jordan Qsar led off with a single to right and scored when Ford Proctor doubled down the left-field line to make it a 1-0 game. Proctor scored with two outs when Jonathan Aranda singled to tie the game at 2-all.

The Cougars and Hot Rods traded runs in the fifth and sixth, with Bowling Green’s Grant Witherspoon scoring on an RBI groundout.

Bowling Green scored twice in the eighth to take its first lead of the day against Cougars reliever Kei-Wei Lin. With one out, Betts launched his 15th homer of the season to give the Hot Rods a 4-3 edge. Connor Hollis singled and stole second, scoring when Witherspoon singled to right to give the Hot Rods a 5-3 advantage.

Kane County came back in the ninth to earn a walk-off victory in the series opener against Hot Rods reliever Joel Peguero. Kane County’s Joey Rose had the game-winning RBI on a sacrifice fly.

The Hot Rods’ Matthew Liberatore hurled six innings while allowing three runs (two earned) on seven hits with two walks and four strikeouts. Cristofer Ogando allowed one hit over two scoreless innings of work with three strikeouts out of the bullpen. Peguero (2-1) blew his third save of the season in his first loss, allowing three runs (two earned) on three hits over 0.2 innings of work.

Bowling Green will send RHP Miller Hogan (1-2, 3.15) to the mound against Kane County RH Ryan Weiss (4-5, 3.73) on Thursday.