Baseball: Bicknase helps power Wauconda past Vernon Hills
A young sophomore and just 5-foot-6, Wauconda center fielder Jacob Bicknase doesn't necessarily look the part of a power hitter.
But Bicknase sure did finish with those kind of numbers Saturday afternoon at Grayslake Central. He crushed a home run over the left-field fence after hitting a big double in his previous at-bat.
Bicknase finished 2-for-2 on the day and drove in 4 runs to lead Wauconda to a 10-1 victory over Vernon Hills in a Class 3A sectional championship.
It's only the second sectional title for Wauconda in program history, with the first dating back to 1981. The Bulldogs (18-15) will face Nazareth, a 10-1 winner over Benet, at 4 p.m. Monday in the Naperville supersectional at North Central College.
"JB is just a sophomore but he's tough up there at the plate," Wauconda coach Bill Sliker said of Bicknase. "He had some good at-bats. Both (the double and the homer) came on 0-2 pitches. He had fouled off a couple of pitches, but he just stayed up there and then the right pitch came in there for him and he turned on it."
Bicknase's double brought in one of the two runs that the Bulldogs put up in the first inning. Then his home run in the second inning really broke open the game. It drove in 3 runs and put Wauconda, which had scored earlier in the inning on an RBI single by Jack Weller, up 6-0.
"I just got a good piece on it and it just went," Bicknase said of his home run, his second of the season. "I was just trying to make good contact with the ball. It was definitely a momentum-changer."
Bicknase hit his homer off of sophomore pitcher Brad Larsen, who had just entered in place of starter Andrew Smith. Smith had allowed 2 hits, a walk and a run to score with two outs already on the board.
Eventually, Larsen was also replaced. Vernon Hills (24-14) struggled for consistency on the mound. The Cougars wound up using four pitchers. They combined to allow 7 walks while also hitting three batters.
"Most of our pitchers today (3 of the 4) were sophomores and it's kind of hard for them to come into a sectional championship game like this," said Vernon Hills catcher Joey Marras, who tried his best to calm the nerves of his young pitchers. "You're going to have (tough games). It's baseball, it happens. But all of these pitchers helped to get us here."
Wauconda had another big inning in the top of the fourth. The Bulldogs scored 4 runs without getting a single hit. They took advantage of 4 walks, a hit by pitch and an error.
"It was a pressure game and we didn't have our locations as good as we needed them to be," Vernon Hills coach Jay Czarnecki said. "They (Wauconda) did a good job of hitting mistake pitches. The home run really hurt. That put them up by 6 runs, and to chase 6 runs against a pitcher like Malisheski, that's really tough."
Wauconda starter Kevin Malisheski gave up just 4 hits, allowed only 2 walks and rolled up 8 strikeouts before leaving in the sixth inning. He moves to 9-3 on the season with the win.
"My teammates did a really good job of giving me really good run support," Malisheski said. "I felt like all I needed to do was go out there and throw strikes and we'd be fine."
After some ups and downs this season, Wauconda, with a record that has hovered around the .500 mark, is now playing its best baseball of the season.
"I'm pleasantly surprised by how we're playing right now," Sliker said. "But not totally surprised. I felt like we could compete at this level. We play a pretty tough schedule, against some of the best teams in northern Illinois. And we had about six 1-run games - and even the ones we didn't win, we were right there.
"We're getting on a roll right now at the right time."