Baseball: Mangano delivers another walk-off win for Lake Zurich

That's why there is no clock in baseball.

After nearly identical first innings on Saturday in Lake Zurich, the hometown Bears had built an 8-2 lead heading to the Geneva seventh. Lake Zurich junior pitcher James Piggott was breezing. The right-hander had retired 10 Vikings in a row, not including a harmless walk with two out in the sixth.

"I was throwing first-pitch curves," Piggott said. "We have a good group of guys here. I might have gotten a little tired."

Geneva woke up in the final at-bats. Jackson Chase doubled in a run. Nick Black doubled in a run. Blake Breon doubled in a run. Lake Zurich used three pitchers in the seventh, as Geneva batted around. After producing 8 hits and 8 runs, Geneva was up 10-8 in the nonconference game.

"We've been playing good baseball," Geneva coach Brad Wendell said. "We really fought hard to get back in this game."

Lake Zurich wasn't fazed. Two walks started the Bears' rally in their half of the seventh. Two bunt hits and Anthony Mangano's fourth single brought in the winning runs in an 11-10 thriller.

Lake Zurich improved to 6-2, while Geneva fell to 6-3-1.

"We had a lot of energy today," Mangano said after delivering his second walk-off hit of the week. "This is like March Madness."

Back to those matching first frames. Geneva's Luke Fisher led off the game with booming double to center. He moved to third on a groundout and scored on Ryan Stempowski's sacrifice fly.

Lake Zurich's Jack Moses doubled to lead off the Lake Zurich first. He moved to third on a wild pitch and scored Mangano's lone out, a groundout.

Three walks led to a 4-run second for the Bears. Mangano and Austin LePage drove in runs with singles.

"Lake Zurich is a good, quality program," Wendell said. "One through five in their lineup are really tough. Their No. 8 kid (Michael Gallus) had 3 hits.

Wendell brought in southpaw Mike Klazura, and this hurler seemed to slow down the Bears' attack.

In Lake Zurich's fifth, two more walks hurt Geneva's cause, as a Jack Pfeifer single and a Moses sacrifice fly scored two more runs.

Hunter Venditti had 2 hits and scored twice for the Vikings.