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South Range falls to defending champs
By charles grove
struthers
The defending state champions took care of business in a Division III district semifinal as Canton Central Catholic dispatched South Range 4-0 at Bob Cene Park.
Clay Davies threw seven shutout innings for the top-seeded Crusaders, allowing three hits and zero walks.
South Range senior Greg Dunham allowed seven hits in his six innings of work. Dunham was able to dance out of trouble in the first and second innings but CCC came through with two runs in the third and one more in the fourth and fifth innings each to put the game out of reach.
A groundout by Davies and a sacrifice fly by Dan Platek in the third opened the scoring. In the fourth, a walk by Quinton Heck and steal of second allowed Cameron Ruffin to lace an RBI single to center.
In the fifth, Platek stung a ball to right field over Aniello Buzzacco’s head for a stand-up triple. Platek scampered home two batters later when a throw from the catcher to Dunham between pitches got away.
“We knew we were going to have to go out there and play a perfect game,” South Range head coach Jim Hanek said. “We had a couple errors, but played well defensively and they had some timely hitting.”
Despite notching just three strikeouts, Davies was in control throughout. Often times making quick work of the Raiders (16-13), Davies needed just four pitches to get out of the first inning.
“We’ve always kind of had that mindset where we want to be aggressive at the plate and get a pitch you can hit early in the count,” Hanek said. “[Davies] threw some early fastballs and we were looking to jump on him early.”
Ethan Dominguez led off the third with a shot to center that Crusader centerfielder J.C. Colangelo made a tumbling dive on to rob a base hit. Dominguez jumped up in disbelief at the play.
South Range’s best opportunity came in the fourth. Jack Bajerski hit a one-out single for the Raiders’ first baserunner of the game and two batters later Brandon Youngs singled to left to put runners on first and second. With Dominguez batting, the Raiders attempted a double steal and Bajerski was thrown out at third to end the South Range threat.
“The middle infield wasn’t paying attention to our runners and we were looking to double steal and get two runners into scoring position,” Hanek said. “We just didn’t get a good jump over at second base.”
From there, Davies allowed only one hit, a bloop single to David Marsilio with one out in the sixth that fell between two defenders. South Range couldn’t advance anyone past first base the final three innings.
CCC head coach Douglas Miller said he knew he had to throw out a strong starting pitcher to counter Dunham, who he called one of the best his team has seen all season.
“We knew with Dunham runs were going to be a premium. For [Davies] to go out there and throw a shutout like that was huge,” Miller said. “With those two I felt it was going to be a low-scoring game. I thought one run or two runs would be able to do it. I feel good we were able to put four runs on the board against him.”