Marmion knocks out St. Francis

With 30 to 40 mile per hour wind gusts frequently halting play during Thursday’s Class 3A Kaneland regional semifinal, Marmion junior Connor Riley had to alter his normal routine of working fast on the mound.

After walking St. Francis leadoff man Alex Alcantar on four pitches to start the game, Riley quickly adjusted and elected to throw a steady stream of fastballs to the Spartan hitters.

That plan worked to perfection as Riley scattered 6 hits and fanned 5 over 6 strong innings. He walked only 1 more batter as his focused defense played error-free ball behind him.

Marmion tallied four runs on a pair of challenging wind-blown fly balls to left field that fell in and went on to secure a 5-1 victory in the rubber match against their Suburban Christian Blue Conference counterparts.

The surging No. 2 seed Cadets (21-10) have won 10 of their last 12 games and will square off against an upstart DeKalb squad in Saturday’s championship game.

“It was my first playoff game, so I was a little too excited at the start and tried to overthrow the ball,” said Riley as he improved to 7-3.

“(Catcher) Kyle (Kozak) came out and said settle down you can do whatever you want out there and dominate them, and that’s what I did.”

The outing mirrored Riley’s performance against the Spartans April 22 when he fanned 6 in 5 innings of an 11-1 Marmion triumph.

“Connor had to continually stop and reset, so that showed a lot of mental toughness on his part to be able to pitch like that,” said Cadets coach Dave Rakow.

St. Francis starter Eric Bacon (7-6) basically matched Riley by giving up only 6 hits over 5 innings, but was not the beneficiary of the same defensive backing.

Marmion grabbed a 1-0 lead in the first when Kozak’s playable two-out fly ball to left center dropped in scoring Mitch Sterne.

The Spartans (17-16) evened the game in the second when freshman Jason Sullivan plated Lonnie Hicks by smoking a two-out double over left-fielder Shane Cano’s head.

The turning point of the game came in the third when Marmion loaded the bases with one out courtesy of a single by Sterne, a walk to A.J. Friedman and Kozak getting hit by a pitch.

Bacon struck out Connor Medernach before Pete Bowe launched a hard-hit ball to left that Jack Petrando struggled to get a read on. Petrando nearly made the diving catch, but the ball popped out of his glove and rolled into foul territory, allowing all 3 runners to score.

“When the wind’s blowing like this, if you can hit a ball hard anywhere it going to be difficult to make a play,” Rakow said. “We had three or four hard hit balls out that way and I would not want to be an outfielder today.”

“Strange day for baseball today. Obviously the conditions were the same for both teams,” said St. Francis coach Rich Janor. “They made a few plays whereas we didn’t.”

Marmion added an insurance run in the fifth on Sterne’s RBI groundout.

The Spartans put leadoff runners on in three of the first four innings, but generated just 1 run. Brett Jungles walked and Hicks singled with two outs in the sixth, but Riley got Bacon to fly out to end the threat.

A.J. Bohr came on to record the final three outs for the Cadets, giving up a harmless two-out single.

“Things just didn’t materialize for us offensively,” Janor said. “Overall Marmion’s a good team. They won our conference and they were the better team today.”

Rakow said he expects to send left-handers Shane Cano and Chris Simon to the mound Saturday against DeKalb, with the order yet to be determined.

The fourth-seeded Barbs (18-15-1) stunned defending Class 3A state champion and top-seeded Kaneland 9-3 in Wednesday’s first semifinal.

“We scouted DeKalb and they have a lot of lefties, so we were hoping to get through without throwing our lefties today,” Rakow said.