Another Wunderlich shuts down Benet
No matter which sister or what mound distance, the Wunderlich girls still have Benet's number.
Alyssa Wunderlich struck out 10, and Naperville Central scored 3 runs in the bottom of the sixth to make her a 4-2 winner on Thursday in Naperville.
"There's a lot of good hitters on that team," Wunderlich said. "I just thought, 'Keep mixing it up like always and take it one pitch at a time.' We had some shaky moments on defense, but our offense really stepped up late."
Wunderlich (3-1) struck out 20 in a regular-season extra-inning win at Benet last year. Her older sister Natalie, now a freshman at Eastern Illinois, no-hit the Redwings 1-0 in a sectional semifinal.
On Thursday Wunderlich scattered 8 hits, stranding 8 Benet baserunners - 5 of them in scoring position. The Redhawks junior has struck out 29 batters and allowed just 1 earned run over her last three starts.
"She was a good pitcher today," Naperville Central coach Andy Nussbaum said. "We feel good winning the game, but we know we have some holes to patch up. Defensively, I'm not happy where we're at."
Benet's Allyson Staats had the better end of the pitchers' duel through five innings, allowing just an unearned run in the third.
Naperville Central leadoff hitter Kelsey Gonzalez started the sixth with a flyball that was dropped in the right-center field gap to put Gonzalez at third. Gonzalez scored the tying run when Jori Gonzalez's grounder to short was booted.
Meghan Griffin followed with a double to center, and Megan Silke walked to load the bases. Up came freshman Katie Walker, who stroked a single to center to score Jori Gonzalez and make it 3-2. Fellow freshman Juliet Tassi followed with a bloop hit to bring in Naperville Central's fourth run.
"Walker's second game-winning hit of the week," said Nussbaum, pointing out that third freshman Laura Dierking homered in Naperville Central's first win. "It was a good win for us. We kept it close and got big hits when we needed them."
Staats (4-3), who struck out six and allowed just 5 hits, deserved a better fate.
"I thought she pitched fantastic," Benet coach Jerry Schilf said. "We had some balls in the outfield drop earlier in the game and a couple to right field we should have caught, and we made some mistakes in the infield. Allyson did everything she could to put us in position to win."
More disconcerting to Schilf than his team's 4 errors was missed opportunities early. Mikayla Panko doubled in Kendall Duffy in the first and the Redwings (4-4) made it 2-0 in the third as Duffy singled, went to third on 2 passed balls and scored on an error.
But Wunderlich worked out of the two-on, one-out jam, leaving the bases loaded.
"We needed to tack those runs on," Schilf said. "If we tack on to that lead those mistakes in the sixth don't hurt us. To Alyssa's credit, when we hit her hard she got better."