Hendricks, Carmel have faith against Lake Zurich

Sometimes a good changeup just isn't quite enough. Ditto for a good curveball.

Just ask Carmel pitcher Tim Hendricks, who had both of those pitches working quite well on Wednesday at Lake Zurich.

But with run support from his offense lacking, and each pitch of his becoming more and more crucial as the game went on, Hendricks decided that he needed to bring out the heavy hitter - the heaviest of hitters, really - to help him get the job done.

"I just prayed," Hendricks said. "I prayed to God that I would keep throwing strikes and stay in the zone."

Apparently, someone up there was listening.

Hendricks went the distance and kept Lake Zurich off the scoreboard, limiting the hosts to just 4 hits in 7 innings as Carmel notched a 2-0 nonconference victory.

The Corsairs move to 10-3 overall while Lake Zurich drops to 8-10.

"I was able to spot my pitches pretty well," said Hendricks, who rolled up 9 strikeouts on the day.

Meanwhile, Lake Zurich pitcher Parker Asmann was just as tough and as stingy as Hendricks but didn't reap the same rewards simply because of errors.

The Bears made 2 errors and that was all the Corsairs needed, and, frankly, the only "offense" they got. Carmel scored a run on each error.

Otherwise, Asmann kept the Corsairs off the scoreboard and limited them to just 5 hits on the day.

"It's too bad because Parker pitched a great game," Lake Zurich coach Gary Simon said. "He was getting ahead of a lot of hitters. And he had his slider working.

"We've had 5 and 6 errors in some of our losses this year and we cut it down to 2 today, but it wasn't quite good enough.

"Carmel has a good ball club. There's no doubt about that. They made the plays and we didn't. We had the errors and we also didn't get the key hits when we needed them."

Like in the fifth inning, for example. Lake Zurich had just gone down two runs and had a great chance to cut into its deficit, but couldn't.

Earlier, in the top half of the inning, Carmel finally broke up the scoreless tie shortly after Brian Serio led off with a single. He eventually scored on an infield error by Lake Zurich that allowed Mike Pudlo to reach first base safely. Ironically, Pudlo also scored on an infield error just minutes later to make the score 2-0.

When Lake Zurich second baseman Anthony Orlando led off the bottom of the fifth with a triple, it seemed as if the damage from the two errors had a good chance of being minimized, if not neutralized.

But Hendricks buckled down, perhaps sent a request upstairs and then retired the next three Bears to get out of the jam.

"It was a little frustrating," Asmann said of Lake Zurich's inability to score runs. "But we fought back. It wasn't like we gave up or anything. I was proud of the guys. (Hendricks) had good stuff, but I thought we battled pretty well."