West Aurora's big 1st inning sinks Geneva
With West Aurora's Brian Geuthle's first career start coming against undefeated Geneva and also falling on the Blackhawks' home opener, his teammates sure knew how to calm the junior's nerves.
In the top of the first, Geuthle's catcher Kyle Spooner picked a runner off first base, which kept the Vikings off the scoreboard even though they had 3 hits in the inning.
In the bottom of the inning, his offense took any other pressure off with an 8-run outburst - and all the damage coming with 2 outs.
Both halves of the first inning told the story of West Aurora's 13-3 victory that lasted just four and a half innings.
Geuthle picked up the win, allowing no walks and the 3 runs on home runs by A.J. Sarantopulos and Cory Hofstetter.
"It was nice to get a guy out there throwing strikes," said West Aurora coach John Reeves.
Walks had been a problem this year for West Aurora (3-3), and so had its offense. That started to change Friday when the Blackhawks scored 2 runs in the sixth inning and 5 in the seventh in a loss at St. Charles East, then carried over to Saturday.
"Yesterday boosted us a lot," first baseman Brandon Lawrence said. "We were in a little bit of a funk I guess. Yesterday brought us up a little."
Lawrence provided the key blow in the first, a high fly ball that landed for a three-run double to left center.
"I was just looking for a fastball," Lawrence said. "It was down the middle and I hit it.
"He (Sarantopulos) was getting behind on a lot of counts and we were sitting on fastballs a lot."
The Blackhawks poured it on after that, with Spooner's RBI single, a 2-run double from Nate Strusz and Tony Gaffino's second single in the first inning adding up to an 8-0 lead.
Sarantopulos took the loss for Geneva, allowing 11 hits in 2 2/3 innings.
"I didn't think his stuff was bad," Geneva coach Matt Hahn said. "West Aurora is always a very good hitting team. I don't blame our pitchers at all.
"If we catch that flyball (on Lawrence's double) it's a 0-0 game after the first inning. Obviously as a pitcher you start pressing a little bit and start thinking you have to get everybody out by yourself. Maybe he was getting too much of the plate."
West Aurora scored 3 runs in the third and 2 in the fourth, with the big blows coming on Brady Renner's RBI double and a 2-run single from Cory Walden.
Geneva (4-1) got all its runs on the 2 longballs, including Hofstetter's blast. When he hit it, a few fans started worrying about their cars parked behind the left-field fence, but it turned out they were safe when the ball carried those cars and landed in the street.
Hahn pointed to failing to score in the top of the first as a turning point.
"In all the years I played baseball, I couldn't tell you the last time we had three hits in an inning, and one of them was a double, and we didn't score," Hahn said. "We tell our baserunners to take aggressive leads and we got caught off. We've been doing it all year. That's not going to change. When you are aggressive on the bases that's going to happen."
Geneva starts Western Sun Conference play this week against Kaneland, while West Aurora has another week of nonconference games before DVC action begins.
Renner hopes the comeback Friday against the Saints, even though the Blackhawks ended up losing, winds up being a spark.
"Up until the sixth inning we hadn't been doing anything," Renner said. "We had not been putting together solid at-bats. The sixth inning, everything clicked. We kind of fed off that, we finally had a little bit of life, little bit of energy."