W. Reserve takes down Aquinas

May 30, 2014 at 12:08a.m.

Bova fills in for ailing Allison

as Blue Devils advance

LORAIN

Five minutes before Western Reserve High baseball coach Ed Anthony was planning to turn in his lineup card for Thursday’s Division IV regional semifinal, his ace pitcher, senior Nick Allison, told him, “Coach, I can’t go.”

Allison, who stands 6-foot-4, has a 9-0 record and measures his ERA in fractions, has been battling an elbow injury all season and felt a twinge after throwing a curveball in warmups.

So Anthony turned to his No. 2 starter, senior Tristan Bova and said, “Nick can’t go.”

Bova’s response? “Gotcha, coach.”

Bova held St. Thomas Aquinas to three runs in five innings and junior John Clegg did the rest, helping the Blue Devils beat the Knights, 5-3, at The Lorain Pipe Yard.

Reserve (19-5) will face Cuyahoga Heights in the regional final at 5 p.m. today. Cuyahoga Heights beat Attica Seneca East, 1-0, on Thursday night.

“I’m really, really happy with how the team responded,” said Anthony, who said he would pitch freshman Wyatt Larimer if Allison can’t go today. “A lot of teams would be dejected but they all looked at each other and said, ‘Let’s pick it up.’”

When asked about Allison’s chances of pitching today, Anthony said, “We’re leaving it up to God.”

Reserve jumped out to a 3-1 lead Thursday in the top of the second inning thanks to a two-run double down the third-base line by No. 9 hitter Jon Timko and an RBI groundout by Walker Marlowe.

“When I’m up to bat, I’m anxious a lot of time and I find myself out in front,” Timko said. “First pitch, I got a good fastball inside and I jumped on it. I think it got our team excited. When we’re up, we play so much better.”

Added Bova, “That [lead] was a real big deal. It kept our momentum, it kept our crowd alive, it kept the players up, it kept everything loud and it kept everything alive. You could tell from the start they didn’t like that and we kept our foot on the pedal.”

Reserve made it 4-1 in the top of the third on Larimer’s RBI double to center, but Aquinas started chipping away, scoring single runs in the fourth and fifth. But the Knights could never get a game-changing hit, stranding a runner in scoring position in each of the last five innings.

Reserve scored an insurance run in the sixth. Larimer led off with a double then moved to third on a groundout. One out later, Marlowe hit a grounder back to the mound, which Aquinas reliever Daniel Piero fielded cleanly. But his throw was off-line, allowing Larimer to score.

Aquinas’ No. 3 hitter, Anthony Moeglin, hit a two-out double in the bottom of the seventh but Clegg got Piero to foul out to first base to end the game.

“They [Reserve] made us earn everything,” Knights coach Joe Bishop said. “We got guys on, but we left guys in scoring position and we couldn’t get that hit to score a couple more runs.”

Western Reserve, which has won 14 straight games, has never made a state tournament appearance. But after making it to the state semifinals in football, the Blue Devils are thinking big, if only to keep pace with their softball team, which also won a regional semifinal Thursday.

“When we talked about our goals, I think the hardest goal for us to achieve was a deep playoff run,” Timko said. “We didn’t say how far that would be but right now, we’re there. We’re getting deeper and deeper.

“We do talk about state and we do think we’re good enough to play in state, but right now we’ve got to focus on the next game.”