Thorson lifts Kaneland past DeKalb
You couldn’t blame DeKalb if they have seen enough of Kaneland senior Bobby Thorson following Wednesday’s game, but unfortunately for the Barbs they’ve got the Knights on the schedule two more times this week.
Thorson kicked off the three-game DeKalb series in grand style Wednesday in Maple Park, going 3-for-3 with 2 doubles, 6 RBI and a grand slam in a 10-2 victory.
Kaneland (8-4, 4-0 in the Northern Illinois Big 12 East) beat DeKalb in the regular season finale last year for a share of the Western Sun Conference championship. The Knights are looking good in the early going of their new conference — now with six straight wins overall — thanks in no small part to Thorson’s huge day.
“That is expected out of Bob,” Kaneland coach Brian Aversa said. “He’s going to show up and he’s going to take advantage of those RBIs because if not (No. 5 hitter) Sammy (Komel) is going to take care of them.”
If all his offense wasn’t enough, Thorson also dominated the Barbs on the mound, allowing just 6 hits and no walks in his complete game victory.
“You could see he had command of his stuff early,” DeKalb coach Jacob Howells said. “We knew we needed it to be a 3-2, 4-3 type of game.”
At least DeKalb (9-7, 1-3) won’t have to worry about how to get a hit off Thorson the next two games, though they still have to figure out how to get him out.
Maybe they should think about walking him — which they did in his final at-bat Wednesday with runners at second and third base.
After Thorson set the Barbs down in order in the top of the first, striking out two, the Knights grabbed a 1-0 lead in their half. Joe Camiliere, who reached base three times and scored 3 runs, walked with two outs. Thorson started his monster day at the plate with an RBI double.
Kaneland broke the game open with an 8-run second inning. Quinn Buschbacher ignited the onslaught with a double. Trever Heinle singled him in, and Brian Dixon followed with a single.
DeKalb misplayed a fly ball in left field loading the bases. Corey Landers stroked a 2-run single to make it 4-0. Camiliere walked to fill the bases again, and this time Thorson brought them all home with a grand slam over the center field fence on a 2-0 fastball down the middle.
“I wanted to stay patient,” said Thorson of his second homer this year. “I just took advantage of a bad pitch.”
Komel made it back-to-back long balls with a home run to left field for a 9-0 lead.
The blast made Komel’s 18th birthday that much more fun.
“I almost didn’t expect it to get out but the wind carried it out,” said Komel, who called it a good present and said he planned to cap his birthday later with dinner at Olive Garden.
Kaneland added a run in the fourth on Thorson’s sixth RBI, a double that scored Camiliere who had reached on an infield single.
About the only downer for the Knights was failing in both the bottom of the fourth and fifth innings to push across the runs to win by the 10-run rule. They left five runners on base in those two innings.
“You want to close the door next time,” Aversa said. “(Thorson threw) 40-some pitches through five innings and we’d like to keep him there instead of 80 pitches now.”
Thorson finished with 8 strikeouts to improve to 3-1.
“I thought Bobby had great control,” Aversa said. “He kept their guys off-balance. We need to get out of it earlier for him if we can. He was comfortable pitching with the lead and throwing strikes.”
Landers added 2 hits while eight of the nine Knights had at least 1 hit. The teams play again Thursday and Saturday.
“We’re getting on a roll now,” Komel said. “This is what we wanted when we had a tough schedule before conference.”