CRESSON TWP. — Since the beginning of the baseball season, West Allegheny head coach Bryan Cornell has preached to his team to hit with two outs.
The Indians executed that message to perfection Thursday afternoon at Mount Aloysius College, as they scored four of their seven runs with two outs and defeated the Red Land Patriots, 7-4, to advance to the PIAA Class 5A semifinals.
While West Allegheny got the last laugh, Red Land took the lead early in the ball game. The Patriots scored three runs in the first three innings and took advantage of three West Allegheny errors and two Austin Hendrick walks.
Down 3-0 entering the bottom of the third inning, Cornell gathered his team for a talk.
“It wasn’t really a message but, it was a ‘Hey guys look at the scoreboard. We have three errors and we have a couple walks. We just can’t do that,'” Cornell said about the talk he had with his players heading into the bottom half of the third inning. “I just said play sound fundamental baseball from here on out and scratch back.”
Just like they have all season long, his team responded. It started with a Luke Lambert double over the left fielder's head, then senior captain Trey Zeroski drove him home with a single to shallow right field. And two batters later, after Hendrick drove a double to the left-center gap, Downing drove home both base-runners to tie the game at three. Just like that, the tides started to turn.
Hendrick, who struck out six and walked three in 4 2/3 innings, started to settle in on the mound. From the fourth to fifth inning, he didn’t allow a runner to pass second. But, because of the shaky first and third innings, Hendrick reached 96 pitches and Cornell went with Ryan Dorste out of the bullpen. The sophomore did his job and struck out Mason Walker to get out of the fifth inning.
“He’s a kid that comes out, he’s probably our most focused guy, someone that wants the ball,” Cornell said of Dorste.
With two outs in the bottom half of the fifth inning, right fielder Brandon Cooper gave the Indians their first lead of the ball game, driving home Hendrick with a double down the right-field line.
As the Indians held a lead, Dorste came out for the top of the sixth inning and while he had already received the run support he needed, his defense decided to help him out, too. First, Zeroski made a sliding stop at short to throw out Jaden Henline at first. Then, Logan Scheider made an over the shoulder catch in shallow right field for the second half of the inning. Everything was now going the Indians way and you could tell someone else was due for a big play.
That final blow of the ball game came, again, with two outs in the bottom of the sixth inning. Brandon Norris and Zeroski had reached base with two outs, then the Patriots elected to walk Hendrick to load the bases for catcher Logan Malatak.
“I can’t tell you how many times through the course of the year that teams walk Austin to get to Logan and Logan comes up with a big hit,” Cornell said
Malatak, who was hitless in three at-bats heading into the bottom of the sixth, delivered a three-run triple to deep left-center that kicked up dirt on the warning track and gave the Indians a 7-3 lead.
“I came up to the plate and said I can’t let this kid beat me again,” Malatak said. “I just wanted to do something to help the team win, looking for a pitch to drive and he gave me one with two strikes, and I put a good barrel on it and it went a long way.”
Although the Indians had a four-run lead, the game wasn’t over just yet. The top of the Red Land lineup tallied three straight singles off of Dorste in the top of the seventh inning and Cornell elected to go with Seth Rosen.
Rosen did allow one run to score on a sacrifice fly, but solidified the win for the Indians with a strikeout to end the game and secure their spot in the state semifinals Monday. The Indians produced from the top of the lineup to the bottom and Cornell was ecstatic that everyone was able to do their job on a big stage.
“Those are things that shows this team really has character,” Cornell said. “They continue to feel good about themselves and they really pull together and it’s great.”
West Allegheny will play Monday against District 1 runner-up Marple Newton at a time and site to be determined. Marple Newton defeated Mars, 6-1, on Monday.