Baseball: Larkin comeback eliminates Dundee-Crown

The Larkin baseball team stared playoff elimination in the face and made it blink.

Trailing by 4 runs in the top of the sixth inning of Monday's Class 4A regional play-in game at No. 8 Dundee-Crown, No. 10 Larkin scored five times to take the lead and added a seventh-inning insurance run to make a 7-5 winner of starting pitcher Kobe Mounivong (3-5).

Andy Bonnot's two-out, 2-run, sixth-inning double to the left-center field wall tied the game 5-5, and he scored the go-ahead tally one batter later on catcher Cy Kerber's opposite-field double to right.

The victory advances Larkin (13-17) to Wednesday's Jacobs regional semifinal against No. 2 Barrington (27-7).

"It feels great," Kerber said after the comeback victory. "I feel like we were the underdogs and we'll be the underdogs against Barrington and we love that. We love that fight. We get down a lot, but we come back."

Dundee-Crown (14-18) first-year coach Matt Mueller opted to throw No. 2 starter Conor Ryan against the Royals while holding back ace Erik Hedmark, a left-handed junior committed to Northern Illinois.

'He could have pitched," Mueller said of Hedmark, who eventually entered the game in relief in the seventh inning with his team trailing 6-5. "That was my decision to throw Conor and I thought he did a great job today."

Indeed, Ryan (4-3) held the Royals in check for the first five innings, limiting them to a run on 5 hits. However, Larkin broke through in the sixth as four of the first five batters hit safely, capped by Bonnot's game-tying double, which scored Tony Cervantes and Jackson Reuter from second and first, respectively.

Ultimately, Ryan yielded 6 earned runs on 11 hits and no walks and struck out 7.

Mounivong, pitching with the lead for the first time since Larkin led 1-0 in the second inning, retired the Chargers in order in the sixth, notching 2 of his 7 strikeouts.

"The couple of runs did hurt but it didn't get me down," he said. "It kind of fired me up to do better. After I got command after that one bad inning, it was all working again."

Mounivong's teammates added a seventh-inning run to give him a 2-run cushion, but the junior was forced by pitch count to exit with two outs in the bottom of the inning with a runner at first base.

Senior reliever Josh Frazier entered and drew a game-ending groundout from Hedmark to second baseman Michael Rodriguez.

Larkin coach Matt Esterino used D-C's decision to withhold Hedmark as motivation.

"I'll be honest, we felt a little disrespected," Esterino said. "We didn't see their ace. He's a good pitcher. We haven't seen the press in two months. We hear everything about how they play in such a tough conference. We don't play in the Sisters-of-the-Poor conference either. It's not a walk in the park in (the Upstate Eight Conference) every day either. So we knew this was going to be a ballgame. I mean, they jumped out to a lead, but 4 of their runs were on dinkers and we threw the ball around, so we knew we were going to have a shot today. We came out with a little chip on our shoulder and we like to be underrated. So we're hoping the same thing happens Wednesday and (Barrington) looks past us."

Bonnot led Larkin with 3 RBI and Kerber finished 3-for-4. Mounivong and Gunnar Boley each registered 2 hits.

Scott Wojcik doubled twice and Sean Jay went 1-for-3 with 2 RBI for Dundee-Crown.