Carmel end it for Wendell, BG
Six. Four. Eleven.
In order, that's the number of Buffalo Grove pitchers that took the mound against Carmel, the number of errors Buffalo Grove had and the number of runs that Carmel rolled up in the fourth inning.
Add it all up and the Carmel baseball team came away with the kind of victory not often seen in sectional championship games -- a 16-1 blowout of No. 14 Buffalo Grove that was called after five innings on Saturday morning at Libertyville because of the 10-run rule.
Top-seeded Carmel hit on all cylinders from start to finish -- and especially in that decisive fourth inning when 16 players came up to bat and four different Buffalo Grove pitchers were used -- to win its first sectional title in four years.
"We came in with an aggressive attitude, thinking we could do some things and it worked out that way," Carmel coach Chuck Gandolfi said. "This is pretty neat for our kids."
The Corsairs, who finished third in the state in 2004, improve to 32-5 and advance to Monday's 7 p.m. supersectional at Alexian Field in Schaumburg. Carmel will face Prairie Ridge, which defeated Rockton Hononegah 4-2 Saturday in the Rockford Guilford sectional championship game.
Buffalo Grove, which made an unexpected run through the playoffs and stunned two top-tier North Suburban Conference teams in Lake Zurich and Mundelein along the way, closes out its season with a 14-15 record.
The game also marked the end of Buffalo Grove coach John Wendell's career. He is retiring after 23 years at the helm.
"Coach (Gandolfi) said we needed to jump on it right away because this team's been hot all through the playoffs," Carmel right fielder Joey Pudlo said of Buffalo Grove. "We knew we had to come out swinging the bats. We came out hot and that's what you've got to do in a game this big."
Pudlo came up big for the Corsairs. He went a team-best 3-for-3 on the day with a double that drove in 2 runs in Carmel's monster fourth inning.
Even though the Corsairs scored 11 runs in the fourth inning, they did so on only 4 hits. The four Buffalo Grove pitchers who were used in the inning walked six Carmel batters and sent two of them to first by hitting them with a pitch.
The Bison also had an error in the inning.
"You can't put that many people on base for free," Wendell said. "We were behind too many hitters. (The Corsairs) did a good job, don't take anything away from them. They hit the ball and did some things to score runs and they had the big inning and we couldn't get out of that."
Not even with tough defense.
Throughout the playoffs, Buffalo Grove counted on its defense in tough times. But against Carmel, there was a breakdown even there.
"We had zero errors for four straight games coming into this," said Buffalo Grove third baseman Mike Ricciardi, whose first-inning double drove in the only run for the Bison. "We had been doing really good defensively and today it just wasn't there for us. We just didn't have it today."
Multiple players had it for Carmel. Besides Pudlo, Donald Stopka also had 3 hits while starter Bobby Lyne moved his record on the mound to 8-2 by allowing just 3 hits.
"They were a really hot team," Lyne said. "But we put the pressure on. The offense played good, the defense played good and we really kept the energy up."