Legion baseball: Fox Lake wins again downstate

Fox Lake Post 703 squeezed out a huge 6-3 win over Highland on Thursday in the American Legion baseball state tournament in Jerseyville.

Fox Lake (17-2) will meet Danville at 3:30 p.m. Friday in the double-elimination tournament. Should Fox Lake win, it advances to the championship on Saturday. A loss means Fox Lake would meet the winner of Highland-Quincy at 7 p.m.

On Thursday, Fox Lake went a little small ball and came up big.

With the game tied at 3 in the bottom of the eighth and the bases loaded for Fox Lake with one out, Jake Mitchell laid down a perfectly executed suicide squeeze bunt. Jack Gorden scored easily on the play, but Fox Lake wasn't quite done. Matt Mason, who was on second base and who never stopped running, also scored on the play, beating the throw to the plate. The throw went awry, which allowed Nick Heidenthal to score from first.

"Everyone was moving on the pitch and it was a perfect bunt," Fox Lake coach Brian Talbott said. "I knew Mason wasn't going to stop. We had talked about this play and we found the right situation and we got a chance to execute it."

Ben Kusiak picked up his second save in as many nights by pitching a scoreless ninth inning as Sean Lane picked up the win. Heidenthal had a solo home run for Fox Lake while Ricky Allen had a 2-run double scoring Nolan Unger and Kusiak.

• Mt. Prospect's season came to an end Thursday night when it lost to Danville 6-4. It was the second loss of the tournament for Mt. Prospect Post 525 (20-11).

Nick Sbertolli, Kyle Sadowski, Marc Gonzalez and Tyler Haffey each had RBI for Mt. Prospect in the top of the fourth as they took a 4-2 lead. But Danville (32-4-1) rallied for 3 runs in the bottom half of the inning and held off Mt. Prospect for their 17th consecutive win.