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Dragons stay
alive
with World Series
win over Walters
State
By Steve Carpenter
HCC Sports Information Director
Sunday, May 29, 2005
GRAND JUNCTION, Colo. – The Hutchinson
Blue Dragons remained perfect this postseason in elimination games,
rallying to defeat Walters State, Tenn., 7-5 in an elimination game of
the 2005 NJCAA World Series on Sunday at Suplizio Field in Grand
Junction, Colo.
The Blue Dragons (38-21) will now play
South Mountain, Ariz., at 11 a.m. (10 a.m. MST) on Monday in another
elimination game. South Mountain eliminated Northeastern Oklahoma A&M
9-4 on Sunday.
The Blue Dragons fell behind 2-0 early
and trailed 4-3 in the seventh, but pulled out their 17th
come-from-behind victory of the season and go 4-0 in elimination games
in the postseason.
Relief pitcher Adam Cornejo returned
six of the seven batters he faced, including a 1-2-3 ninth inning to
earn his seventh victory of the season without a loss. He also dropped
his team-best earned run average to 0.61. Cornejo retired the top of
the Walters State line-up in order in the ninth. A significant feat
because C.J. Lee, Ryan Kinder and Justin Pickett were on base a
combined 13 of 16 times before the ninth inning.
Walters State outhit Hutchinson 11-9,
but finally the Blue Dragons got some clutch hits since arriving in
Grand Junction.
With the game tied at 5-all in the
ninth – the Blue Dragons were the visiting team – HCC loaded the bases
with no outs after Brandon Doherty walked, Andy Dirks turned a
sacrifice bunt into an infield single and Chris Rusler reached on bunt
single when Senators’ pitcher Zane Stone had no play. After Noah Krol
struck out, Thad Weber hit a sacrifice fly to right field to score
Doherty with the go-ahead run. Lindy Wray followed with a two-out
single through the left side that scored Rusler for a 7-5 Dragon lead.
Weber had a productive day despite
having only one official time at-bat. The redshirt freshman drove in
two runs, with two sacrifice flies and he was hit with two pitches.
Dirks and Rusler were each 2 for 5 with
one scored. Rusler had a huge RBI double that tied the game in the
seventh. He also scored from second base on a Weber sacrifice fly in
the seventh that gave HCC a 5-4 lead. Wray also had two hits for the
Dragons.
Hutchinson starting pitcher Noah Krol
pitched seven tough innings and got a no-decision. He struck out three
and walked three while allowing 10 hits and five runs.
Highlights
Walters State jumped out to a 2-0
first-inning lead when the Dragons looked to have a hangover from
Saturday’s 11-2 loss to New Mexico Junior College Tyler Westmoreland
singled home two runs, but the Dragons got out of the inning when Zack
Bowman hit into a 1-6-3 double play.
The Dragons scored their first run when
Doherty, who scored three runs in the game, came home when the
Walters State right fielder’s
throw to third on Dirks’ single sailed past the third baseman to cut
the lead to 2-1.
HCC loaded the bases in the fourth and
took advantage. Clint Elkins doubled down the left-field line to score
Weber and Wray, but Luke Naccarato was thrown out at the plate. Still
HCC took a 4-3 lead.
Walters State grabbed a 4-3 lead in the
sixth and had Krol on the ropes. After Chad Maddox singled to put
Walters State 4-3, Krol coaxed a pair of flyouts to end the inning.
Hutchinson answered right back in the
seventh. Rusler’s double to the gap in left-center scored Brandon
Doherty, who reached base and the Senators’ left fielder misplayed a
deep fly ball at the track and was given an error. With one out and
Rusler still at second, Weber hit a fly ball to deep center field that
Lee caught, but was slow to return to the infield. Rusler scored all
the way from second to give HCC a 5-4 lead.
Krol faced more trouble in the seventh
after allowing a walk and error after two were out. Westmoreland, who
was 3 for 3, singled to tie the game at 5-all.
That led to the ninth-inning heroics of
Weber and Wray to give HCC a 7-5 lead.
Cornejo got Lee to hit a soft liner to
Weber at first for the first out. Then Kinder and Pickett hit long fly
balls, but Wray and Dirks made the catches just short of the warning
track to give the Blue Dragons their first World Series win in program
history.
QUOTES
Head coach Kyle Crookes
Discussing coming back to win
after losing in the first round …
“I don’t think our team knew to be
nervous until we got here today. Luckily it got out of us in the first
two or three innings and we were able to get out and get going. (Being
behind) seems to be a comfortable place for them to be in. It’s not
easy on our pitchers to stick them in a hole like that. I would like
for us to win 15-0, but we never do it. We don’t seem to play well
when we are ahead.”
On playing small-ball …
“That’s our team. We are not a home
run-hitting team. We have to do other things. We don’t have a whole
lot of kids who can (hit homers). I don’t teach it that way. I know
how to teach players to bunt and move them over.”
On Thad Weber’s offensive
performance …
“I will take all the RBIs I can get out
of him. That’s his job. That last one was the biggest one. The kid
made a great catch, but That put the bat on the ball and gave us a
chance to score. That’s his job is to get RBIs and win.”
On Chris Rusler scoring from
second on Thad Weber’s sacrifice fly to center field …
“I thought about it earlier (with
Brandon Doherty). I was kicking myself for not having done it then
because it would have been an easy run. Then we were in the exact same
situation with Rusler. The ball was hit to almost the exact same spot.
I had to try it.”
On Lindy Wray’s two-out hit in
the ninth inning …
“That was huge to be able to do that
after the sac fly and create some separation. It’s never fun to pitch
with a one-run lead. It was a big two-out hit. Two-out hits win a lot
of baseball games. It won’t go down as the game-winning RBI, but to me
it creates the ability for a pitcher to work in a comfort zone as
opposed to pick and try to make the perfect pitch.”
First baseman Thad Weber
On his ninth-inning at-bat …
“Everybody in the ballpark expected
Noah to put the ball in play, but unfortunately he struck out. I just
came up knowing I had one shot and I wanted to try and get the ball to
the outfield and try to drive in as many runs as I can. He threw a
first-pitch curveball. I put a pretty good swing on it and got it out
to right field. We got the run home and that’s the most important.”
On being down two runs early …
“We 100 percent expected to win today.
We felt in our dugout that when we got down one or two runs … there’s
no panic in our dugout. We’ve got the guys who can do the job. We
showed today what kind of team we are and we will do what we have to
to win. We will play smallball and we did the important things today
to win.”
Right fielder Lindy Wray
On not becoming the first team to
be eliminated …
“Region VI is well-respected here with
the Cowleys and the Garden City’s and Sewards. We want to represent
those teams as well and represent the Midwest and the state of Kansas as best as we could.”
Pitcher Adam Cornejo
On pitching the ninth inning to
Walters’ 1-2-3 hitters who had been on base 13 of 16 times in the game
…
“Coming up against the leadoff guy, I
told myself that I was going to have to be really good in that AB. I
had been watching him the whole game and saw that he did everything he
could to get on base and I knew I was going to have to be good to do
whatever I could to keep him off base. I was doing whatever I could to
keep him off balance and he hit a soft line drove to the first
baseman.”
On retiring Walters State in
order in the ninth …
“Two of the three guys hit the ball
pretty hard. I didn’t know if the ball was going out, but when my
outfielders started slowing down and I was pretty sure the ball was
going to stay in the yard.”
Third baseman Chris Rusler
On scoring from second on Thad
Weber’s sacrifice fly …
“I was just tagging up from second to
third and all of the sudden I see coach waving me around and I thought
‘oh, boy, here we go.’ We really needed that run bad. I was just
trying to get there as hard as I could. The catcher was blocking the
plate pretty good, so I had to slide pretty wide but I got in there.”
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