Baseball: Defense helps Dundee-Crown take lead on Hampshire
Leading Hampshire 8-4 after 6 innings, visiting Dundee-Crown looked in good shape to win its opening game of the Fox Valley Conference season.
Unfortunately for the Chargers darkness set in and the game was suspended. The contest will be finished before the regularly scheduled game between the two teams Wednesday at Dundee-Crown in Carpentersville.
The Chargers (1-5), who committed 23 errors in their first 6 games, made only 2 errors in 6 innings of play.
"I liked the way we played defense aggressively today," said Dundee-Crown coach Matt Mueller. "We got to a lot of balls and made most of the plays. I would like our outfield defense to play more aggressively. But overall, this was by far our best defensive effort of the season."
Nick Gregory gave the Chargers a solid 6 innings on the mound. The right-hander struck out 6 and walked 2 while allowing 4 runs on 6 hits.
"Nick was awesome," said Mueller. "He was mixing his 3 pitches very well. His breaking ball was really moving and he did a great job of throwing strikes. He got a lot of support from his defense. It was a great effort by Nick."
The D-C offense, which benefitted from 6 Hampshire errors, collected 9 hits off 3 Hampshire (6-2) pitchers.
The Chargers scored an unearned run in the first and added a run in the third on a run-scoring single by Zach Hahn.
D-C broke the game open with 3 runs in the fourth and 3 more in the sixth.
In the fourth, the key play was a suicide squeeze bunt by Ray Gestritch which scored Justin Lawson who led off the inning with a single.
"We wanted to score another run and their defense was back," said Mueller. "Ray couldn't have executed the bunt any better."
With 4 hits, D-C scored 3 in the sixth on a RBI double by Jack Waldron and RBI singles by Gestritch and Ryan Lascano.
Gestritch and Hahn collected 2 hits each for the Chargers.
The Whip-Purs got on the scoreboard with 2 in the third on RBI singles by Andrew Krajecki and Kevin Michaelson.
Hampshire tallied singles runs in the fifth and sixth on RBI doubles by Ben Corcelles and Logan Nesper.
Michaelson paced the Whip-Purs with 2 hits.
"Matt (Jachec), Nathan (Peteck) and Nick (Tenny) all pitched well," said Hampshire coach Frank Simoncelli. "D-C hit a lot of ground ball and we couldn't make the plays. We were very sloppy defensively and couldn't make the simple plays. We have nobody to blame but ourselves. Offensively, we didn't work the pitch count like we could. We had played solid baseball for the first 8 games of the year. Today, we need to learn from this game."