COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. – Paul Panduro and Harold Baez combined on 15 strikeouts and the Western Nebraska Community College baseball team moved into the winner's bracket finals after topping Southeast Community College 6-4 Thursday at the Region IX Empire Conference tournament at UCHealth Field in Colorado Springs, Colo.
WNCC will play Lamar Community College on Friday at 2 p.m. with the winner moving into the championship game on Saturday. Lamar came back from a 5-0 deficit against McCook Community College to capture the 9-8 win.
Southeast and McCook will face each other in an elimination game at 10 a.m. on Friday.
WNCC head coach Mike Jones said his team played determined and stayed together to get the win.
"We played really consistent," Jones said. "We didn't make a whole lot of mistakes. We kind of played a smart game and kept everything under control."
What the Cougars did was play well defensively. One of the biggest plays of the game came in the sixth inning when Southeast loaded the bases with no outs. The defensive play of the game came as Jayden Orozco fielded a line shot down the third base line and immediately tagged third and then threw home as WNCC catcher Mikey Felton tagged out the runner for a double play ending the threat with no runs scored.
Jones said that was definitely a key moment in the game.
"That was a great play," Jones said. "The ball was hit hard and Jay had to go to his right a little bit and it led him right into third base. He steps on third and then kept himself under control and has a really good throw to home. It was an outstanding play and got us out of trouble."
While the defense was playing strong, so was the pitching staff. Panduro went six strong innings in striking out nine in scattering six hits and allowing three runs. Panduro only walked two. Baez then came in and tossed three strong innings to get the save. Baez allowed just one run and three hits, while striking out six.
"Paul and Harold were really good. Both guys were outstanding. They got themselves in a few jams, but never panicked. They always kept their emotions under control and they delivered some rally big pitches when they needed to."
Offensively, the Cougars did enough good things to score when they needed to.
WNCC scored first with two runs in the first. Caleb Coats started the game with a single followed by Luis Alcantara reaching base after getting hit by a pitch. Joey Olson then scored both runners with a sharp single to right field for the 2-0 lead.
Southeast came back and scored single runs in the second, third, and fourth innings to grab a 3-2 lead. WNCC knotted the score with a single run in the fifth. Southeast walked three straight batters to load the bases with just one out. Jordan Rollins then earned the fourth walk of the game to tie the contest at 3-3.
The Cougars then took a 4-3 lead with another run in the sixth. This time Matt Womack and Orozco each singled. Coats then scored Womack with a 2-out single for the 4-3 lead.
The seventh saw WNCC build the lead to 5-3 when Rollins tripled and scored on an Olson single for the 2-run lead.
Southeast responded with just one in the seventh to cut the lead to 5-4. The Cougars added an insurance run in the ninth when Rollins earned a walk and scored on a single by Womack for the 6-4 lead.
The bottom of the ninth saw Baez step up as he got two Southeast batters swinging at third strikes and the other out came on a groundout from shortstop Alcantara to Womack at first base for the win.
WNCC finished with eight hits on the day compared to nine for Southeast. Coats, Olson, and Womack each had two hits. Olson had three RBIs on the day. Jordan Rollins had the only extra base hit among both teams with a triple. Rollins also scored two runs and had an RBI.
WNCC will face the South Division top team in Lamar Friday afternoon at 2 p.m. Jones said they will need to play smart and strong to advance to the championship game.
"It is going to be important tomorrow [Friday] to play really good defense. Trent [Richter] needs to pitch a consistent game, throw a lot of strikes, mix in the slider and change-up, and we need to play good defense behind him. I think offensively we will play a little bit better tomorrow. We will cut down on our swings and put more balls into play with more of a line-drive approach."
Game 1
WNCC 200 011 101 – 6 8 2
Southeast 011 100 100 – 4 9 1
WP – Paul Panduro; S – Harold Baez; LP – Brandon Doty.
3B – WNCC (Jordan Rollins).
Game 2
McCook 020 200 112 – 8 15 1
Lamar 000 000 63x – 9 13 2
WP – Ross Martin; S – Liam Doolan; LP – Alex Lozada.
2B – Lamar (Brad Hallock, Jaxon Himel, Davis Matinek); McCook (Ricky Hernandez 2, Daniel Bannon, Zack Beatty 2).
HR – McCook (Kade Woot).