Wildcats scratch out win
By Chad Drury, The Hawk Eye, Burlington, Iowa | |
McClatchy-Tribune Information Services |
Perhaps a well-played tournament will do the trick.
The Wildcats, who started the season with eight consecutive losses, have played better of late, and they capped it off with a 4-2 victory over Burlington in the championship game of the Merle Breiholz Invitational Saturday at Wayne Duke Field.
"I told the kids that if we could play defense behind our pitchers and get some good at-bats, that things would turn around for us," North coach
While North (5-12) was able to string together two solid games, the Grayhounds (12-10) saw their season in a nutshell. They powered past
"We couldn't hit and we didn't play good defense against North, and that was a recipe for disaster," BHS coach
North followed its 15-4 win over
Yet, whenever the Grayhounds narrowed the gap, as they did in the third when
BHS got a run back in the fifth on
"In high school baseball, anything can happen when you give a team opportunities to make plays," Wachal said. "I thought Burlington played well today, but they made some timely errors that gave us an opportunity for runs."
The Grayhounds got solid performances out of their pitchers in both games.
"All day our pitchers were fine. They threw strikes and pitched to contact," Schneden said. "They did enough to win. We didn't get the job done behind them."
BHS had a battle on its hands with
The Grayhounds took an 8-4 lead in the sixth as Plein,
Five of the eight BHS hitters in the seventh scored. McChesney, Rosson and Anderson all had run-scoring hits. Rosson drove in five runs in the contest and had five hits in the doubleheader.
"We played a pretty good game one," Schneden said. "From the third inning on, we played good baseball."
North had a similar situation in its win over
Still, Wachal was pleased with his team's overall play. He received strong pitching out of
"He did a nice job today. He got ahead of a lot of guys," Wachal said. "We have outfielders who have speed and can go make plays. We just didn't let a lot of guys on with walks. He threw strikes."
BHS made good contact against Runge, but the ball went right to the Wildcats.
"We stayed aggressive in hitters' counts, but maybe we didn't take the best swings in those situations," Schneden said. "North played very good baseball. It would probably be easy to overlook them, but they forced us to make some swings we didn't want to make. They did what they needed to win."
The teams play each other in a
"We just like coming down here. It's a good experience for our kids to play," Wachal said. "Burlington is always tough in its own tournament."
"There are definitely advantages when you can physically play a team rather than just rely on stats," Schneden said. "There are things we can take away from this game and use later. There's a chance we could see them in the postseason, and we'll have played them three times. But it goes both ways."
The Grayhounds host
FIRST GAME
Burlington 122 003 5 -- 13 12 0
Durant 210 010 0 -- 4 10 4
WP --
CHAMPIONSHIP GAME
Burlington 001 010 0 -- 2 6 4
Dav.North 021 010 x -- 4 5 1
WP --
Records: Burlington 12-10, Davenport North 5-12,
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