Charleston – It’s been a little over a month but the Man faithful will be making the trip back up to Charleston to watch their team compete for another championship.
Hillbillies pitcher Ryan Cozart allowed just one earned run, pitching a complete game as Man defeated Charleston Catholic 7-3 in the Class A semifinals Friday evening at Power Park in Charleston.
Cozart was stellar despite some miscues behind him. He overcame nine total errors from his defense to guide the program to its first state championship appearance since 2014.
“It doesn’t happen very often,” Man head coach Mike Crosby said when asked about overcoming the errors. “We kept pounding the baseball. That’s one thing about this team – we’ve been able to hit the baseball really good. We came into this tournament with a team average of about .360 or a little better and that’s not real common. So they’ve been up to the challenge all year long. Believe it or not before we got all of our players back before basketball was over we were kicking it around a lot like we did tonight.”
Crosby wasn’t wrong – his team pounded the baseball, atoning for the errors in the field.
In total the Hillbillies notched 13 hits, doing most of their damage with two outs and it all started in the second inning.
The first three Billies all reached to open the frame but a strikeout and a force out threatened to leave Man empty handed.
Caleb Blevins had other thoughts.
The junior shortstop sliced a double to right that scored Brady Hall and Jace Adkins, staking Man to a 2-0 lead.
“They were putting a lot of pressure on us early in the game,” Charleston Catholic head coach Bill Mehle said. “(Blevins) made a great swing at a great pitch and Jake came in after that and said it was a great pitch, he just put a better swing on it. And that’s true. Sometimes hitters beat good pitches and he did on that one. So yeah, that was a momentum changer.”
Catholic pitcher Jacob Hufford limited the damage to two runs but found himself in trouble again in the fourth.
After retiring the first two batters in the frame, Hufford allowed a double to Preston Blankenship. Blankenship scored on a Casey Hurley single and Cozart followed with a single to score Hurley, helping his own cause.
A single and two walks allowed Cozart to trot home for the fifth run of the inning.
Meanwhile the senior hurler kept rolling on the mound.
He limited Catholic to just three hits through six innings, yielding on unearned run over that span.
“I use the old saying that Ryan can knock a gnat out of the air,” Crosby said. “His control is phenomenal. Him and my assistant coach Jack Daniel – Jack does a phenomenal job with the pitchers and the defense. Him and Jack have established a relationship. Jack calls the pitches and they can read each other’s minds. They set a lot of hitters up and Ryan may only throw 76 to 78 (miles per hour), if that, and occasionally touch 80, but when his curveball’s working and everything that fastball comes out and it looks like it’s about 85 or 90 if they aren’t ready for it.”
The Billies added a run each in the fifth and seventh innings, taking a 7-1 lead into the bottom of the seventh.
The Irish didn’t go down easy though, nor would Man allow them to.
After retiring the first batter Cozart allowed a one-out single and his defense allowed the next two batters to reach on errors. The miscues resulted in Catholic’s second run and Hufford kept the rally alive with an RBI single to make it 7-3.
Cozart calmed the storm though by inducing and flyout and getting a grounder to top off the performance.
“If we don’t fix (the errors), and I thought through sectionals and regionals we had cleaned it up,” Crosby continued, ‘but if we don’t fix it, it’s going to cause us problems.”
Catholic wraps up its season at 24-10 while Man improves to 22-8 and will play two-time defending state champion Moorefield on Saturday at approximately 3:30 p.m. at Power Park.
Contact Tyler Jackson at tylerjackson@lootpress.com, call him at 304-731-5542 and follow on Twitter @tjack94