Baseball: Downers Grove North rallies to beat WW South
Downers Grove North's baseball team turned chipping away into an art form on Tuesday.
The Trojans advanced to the Class 4A Yorkville regional semifinals with a 6-5 come-from-behind victory over Wheaton Warrenville South in Carol Stream, rallying from a 3-run deficit after four innings.
Sophomore Cam Demos tied it in the top of the sixth with an RBI triple and Ben Johnson's sacrifice fly drove him in for what turned out to be the game-winning run. The reward is a Wednesday matchup against top-seeded Neuqua Valley.
"If we're down or if we're up, we just keep trying to play the same way," said Trojans starting pitcher Nick Bacarella, who gutted through 5⅓ innings. "You've just got to keep making plays. Even when we were down, we were confident we could pull it out."
WW South (13-20) led 5-2 when Downers North (11-19) began its comeback in the top of the fifth. It didn't look like much at the time, but back-to-back run-scoring groundouts by Jack Carr and Bacarella narrowed the gap to 5-4 and set the stage for the tying and go-ahead runs an inning later.
Trojans reliever Matt Carbon sent down five of the six batters he faced to notch the save and preserve the win for Bacarella.
"We just didn't put enough good at-bats together," said WW South coach John Scherrman. "At times we just shut down offensively, but give their pitcher credit. We had him on the ropes a couple times and he kept battling."
Scott Jakobsze singled in a run as Downers North took a 2-0 second-inning lead, but WW South responded with 3 runs in the bottom of the inning on a 2-run single by Joe Adamek and a run-scoring infield single by starting pitcher Matt Scherrman.
Mitch Sandleback extended the lead to 4-2 with a third-inning RBI double. A wild pitch made it 5-2 in the fourth.
"We've been talking about competing all year long," said Downers North coach Kyle Briscoe. "It's the one thing we've asked our kids to do all year, and they battled today. Guys stepped up big."
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