Baseball: Jacobs upsets Huntley in Class 4A Dundee-Crown Sectional semifinal
Jacobs pitcher Anthony Edge remembered well his previous outing against Huntley, a Fox Valley Conference game in which the Red Raider roughed him up for five earned runs in 3 1/3 innings.
Edge came in from the bullpen to face Huntley's Ryan Bakes and Ryan Quinlan, with a runner on second and a two-run lead in the sixth inning longing for a different outcome.
"Honestly, those guys owned me coming into this game," Edge said. "In the regular season they put up some good ABs against me, but I just wanted to get outs. That's all I wanted."
This time, Edge got his payback while nailing down the Golden Eagles' 7-4 victory in the Class 4A Dundee-Crown Baseball sectional semifinal Wednesday.
The senior right-hander fanned Bakes and Quinlan to end the sixth, then induced a pop-up from AJ Putty and struck out Ryan Dabe and CJ Filipek, at which point he took three steps off the mound, looked Jacobs' players pouring onto the field and heaved his glove 20 feet high.
The Eagles (19-18) earned a date in Saturday's 11 a.m. championship against the winner of Thursday's semifinal between Grant and Hononegah. Huntley finished its season 29-8 with its fifth FVC title in a row, but fell short of a sectional title.
Jacobs' Christian Graves, who will be Edge's teammate at Bradley next season, battled Huntley for 5 1/3 innings, allowing four earned runs and 10 hits. But Graves got stronger in the later innings, finishing with 96 pitches.
"Just knowing I have an offense behind me," said Graves, who got the Eagles on the scoreboard with a leadoff homer in the second inning. "Just really trusting myself and trusting my defense behind me. I believe in every one of these guys on my team and the coaching staff. A couple mistakes here and there, but we got through it. (Jacobs coach Jamie) Murray always says, 'Flush it.' Just flush everything and we'll get through it and we did."
The key inning came in the third with Huntley leading 2-1 after two innings from pitcher Malachi Paplanus, making his second appearance after an elbow strain in early April. Vinny Costantino entered in relief, but struggled to find the strike zone. Jacobs scored four unearned runs on an error, four walks and two hits. Dabe, in left field, threw a one-hopper to catcher Ryan Bakes to get courtesy runner Nathan Martinko for the final out and prevent further damage.
Huntley coach Andy Jakubowski counted 13 free bases his team allowed with errors, hit by pitches or walks.
"You can't give that to a good team like that," Jakubowski said. "They made us pay for it. They capitalized on their opportunities."
Jakubowski also pointed to two crucial defensive plays Jacobs made in the outfield in the first and second innings. Left fielder Paulie Rudolph caught a ball at full speed to take away a hit from Quinlan; right fielder Nick Gottfried did the same an inning later against Ryan Bakes.
"Those were early in the ballgame and we could have had a few more runs," Jakubowski said. "They made great plays and (Graves) got stronger as the game went on and Edge blew us away. Edge was electric today."
Gottfried doubled and scored on two wild pitches in the fifth. Edge ripped an RBI single in the top of the seventh for another insurance run.
"Everything was perfectly executed," Murray said. "It was the plan we wanted. It came down to this: Execute our game plan with how we wanted to pitch their big guys. That top six guys in their lineup is incredible. It is a grind.
"Christian and Anthony have both played varsity for three years. I knew if we could get to Anthony at the end we'd have an advantage because he thrives in that role. He starts, but he's been our closer in the past and he knows how to finish the game."
Edge threw 23 pitches and, although he rolled his left ankle coming off the mound, thought he would be ready to start Saturday's sectional title game.
"It was adrenaline more than anything. A lot of it was a blur, but it's everything you train for. As a team I knew we had a good chance, we had a lot of momentum coming in and we did what we had to do.
"A lot of my two-seams were moving good today. I was giving them a steady mix of two-seams and sliders, two balls moving in opposite ways. I was really just trying to mess with their eyesight and disrupt their timing."
Huntley right fielder Joey Garlin had two hits, two sacrifice flies and three RBIs. Filipek had a double and a triple and an RBI.
"We definitely had a good approach early in the game, some things didn't fall our way," Garlin said. "Ryan Bakes scorches the ball into the right-center gap and Nick Gottfried makes a great play. Some things didn't fall our way, but it's still a good game.
"It's definitely hard to say goodbye. We thought we could go far with this team, but it's baseball. It doesn't always go your way, it's just one game. If we don't execute on every level we'll lose the game."