Coal City – The last time Independence and Wyoming East met on the diamond, errors doomed the Patriots as a seventh-inning meltdown resulted in a 3-2 Lady Warrior win.
Indy ace Delaney Buckland made sure that opportunity wasn’t presented again.
Behind a 14-strikeout effort, Buckland handcuffed East in the rematch, yielding just three hits in a 4-1 Indy win Monday in Coal City.
Dominant for most of the game – striking out six straight batters at one point – the junior all-stater never allowed a runner in scoring position with her lone blemish coming via a fourth-inning home run.
“I tell her all the time, and we’ve got a big change up in there towards the end of the game, but if she’ll have faith – sometimes she loses a little faith in pitches,” Indy head coach Ken Adkins said. “We have this little thing where I’ll call it and she’ll throw it as a bad pitch thinking I won’t call it again. I told her when we get in these situations you have to come with that changeup. If you throw it once or twice a game it’s enough to keep people honest. They can’t just bear down on it and start cranking for the fences. Her curveball worked really well today and we picked them apart on the outside part of the plate.
“This umpire gave us that and he’d give us the inside corner. As far as balls and strikes he did a good job. But she had command of her pitches. When she’s on we can move the ball inside and outside. I feel like we’re just now hitting that stride and it’s starting to show and when she’s like that the strikeouts go up.”
Buckland jumped out to a quick start, retiring the first three East batters in order but in the bottom of the frame the story resembled that of the teams’ earlier meeting where East yielded an early 2-0 lead on fielding errors.
A leadoff walk to Buckland put the wheels in motion as she scored with one out when a fly ball hit by Kendall Martin was dropped in right field, allowing Buckland to score. Sarah Bragg, back after missing last week with an illness, lined a double into center that scored Martin, giving the hosts a 2-0 lead after an inning.
It remained that way for two more frames with Buckland striking out the side in order in the second and third innings. Then she ran into trouble. The second time through the order East pitcher Olivia Hylton cranked a solo homer over the fence in left to cut the deficit in half.
Unfortunately for the visitors that was the high point of the evening.
Buckland allowed just two more hits the rest of the way while a pair of fifth inning errors allowed two more Indy runs to score – one on a sac fly from Alli Hypes and another on a throwing error from second to first base.
“The game was basically the same game we had down there,” Adkins said. “We got up early – I didn’t feel comfortable with the two-run lead and I told the kids ‘listen, we’ve been here before.’ (East) don’t hit the ball well. They’re not a great hitting team but it seems like they get hits when they need them. I thought we had a called third strike when the girl hit the home run but that’s what happens and the next pitch you give up a home run. Delaney did a good job. It’s tough because we know each other so well. Their seniors, I have three years of records on. We know every pitch they’ve thrown in their high school careers. We tried to stay away from what we thought they could hit.
“We got some pop ups and mishits we thought – they really helped the pitcher. We put the ball in play when we needed to and I told the kids before the game if you put the ball in play both teams are similar in that we rely so much on the pitcher. When you get a ball put in play, nobody’s ready for it. It’s like a surprise. We’re guilty of it and that’s kind of what happened to them today. But I’m proud of our kids. We wanted to come back and get this after losing down there.”
For East it was a continuation of troubling trend with errors costing the Lady Warriors numerous games. That coupled with their inability to figure Buckland out doomed them.
“We didn’t swing smart,” East head coach Doc Warner said. “They thought we had some bad calls, but there’s two other pitches to hit. Don’t let those go by and don’t blame the umpire. He aint beat nobody. We can’t hit. (Buckland’s) a good pitcher. Anybody that spins the ball gives us trouble because we get off the wrong foot and swing. The one girl that hits her pretty good, Cadence Clay, she stays back and doesn’t try to homer every time. All we’ve got to do is hang in but we don’t. You have to make contact early.”
East drops to 8-8 and will travel to PikeView on Tuesday. Independence improves to 9-5 and will host sectional rival Shady Spring on Tuesday.
Email: tylerjackson@lootpres.com and follow on Twitter @tjack94
WE: 000 100 0 – 1 3 3
I: 200 020 X – 4 5 0
Pitching and Catching – WE: Olivia Hylton and Paige Laxton; I: Delaney Buckland and Alyssa Daniels. WP: Buckland, LP: Hylton.
Hitting – WE: Hylton 1-3 (HR, RBI), Bane 1-3, Clay 1-2; I: Buckland 1-2, Hypes 1-2 (2B, RBI), Bragg 1-3 (2B, RBI), Lilly 1-3, Stanley 1-1.
