Mahar, Mundelein make the grade vs. Lake Zurich
The last time the Lake Zurich baseball team ran up against Mundelein, it wasn’t pretty.
Back in early April, the Mustangs handled Lake Zurich in back-to-back North Suburban Conference Lake Division games by an average of nearly 10 runs.
But on Wednesday, heading into their regional semifinal against Mundelein, the Bears were optimistic. Having won 12 of their final 15 games of the regular season after hobbling out to an uncharacteristically slow 4-13 start, they knew they were a much different team.
The thing is, Mundelein is pretty much the same team it was back in early April. Probably better.
Once again, the Mustangs dominated Lake Zurich, this time en route to a 9-1 regional semifinal victory that catapults them into Saturday’s championship game at Barrington. Mundelein, which moves to 27-7 on the season and is the No. 1 seed in the Barrington sectional, will play the winner of today’s game between No. 8 Hersey and No. 9 Palatine.
“We know that Lake Zurich can play,” Mundelein pitcher Ben Mahar said. “We knew they were hot coming in and that we had to bring our ‘A’ game.”
Mahar certainly made the grade.
He went the distance and kept the Bears guessing. Mahar, a Valparaiso University recruit, gave up just 6 Lake Zurich hits while striking out 2 batters and allowing just 3 walks. His record improves to 9-1 on the season.
“He’s a stud,” Lake Zurich third baseman Parker Asmann said of Mahar. “Nothing he throws is straight. He’s a really good pitcher. It was tough to hit him today because he didn’t make a lot of mistakes. You’ve got to tip your cap to him.”
The Bears won’t forget to tip their caps to themselves for all the resiliency they showed in coming back from a 4-13 start.
“We started out really, really slow,” said Asmann, who will be playing Division I baseball himself at the University of Evansville. “But we have a really good group of kids and no one ever gave up. We all stayed together, we’re all good friends and we all had good attitudes. We had high hopes coming in here today because we definitely are a different team than when we played Mundelein before.
“It just didn’t work out the way we wanted it to.”
Not only did Mahar make sure of that, so did the Mundelein offense.
The Mustangs pounded out 9 hits, advanced at least one runner to second in every inning and scored at least one run in every inning but the second.
Senior third baseman Austin Ozog paved the way for Mundelein with 3 hits.
“We had quality at-bats up and down the lineup. Everyone contributed today,” Ozog said. “All season we’ve done that. If someone wasn’t hitting, another guy would step it up.
“We’ve been waiting for this for a couple of weeks. We hit a rough patch in our season and we’ve been looking forward to getting going (in the tournament).”
After rolling to a 20-0 start, Mundelein dropped four straight games earlier this month.
It was just the jolt the Mustangs needed prior to the tournament.
“You never know how kids are going to respond (to adversity), but I could tell during batting practice today that our seniors want to keep playing,” Mundelein coach Todd Parola said. “They’re not ready for their senior year to end.”
Senior Charlie Gandolfi came up big for the Mustangs with a hit and 2 runs scored. Ditto for junior Chris Maranto.
For Lake Zurich (16-17), Asmann and Sean Eder each had doubles but no one had more than 1 hit.
“We finished (the season) strong, it’s just too bad it ended like this,” Lake Zurich coach Gary Simon said. “We said that we were going to get it together, and we did. We had a nice run.”