06-01-2012, 03:07 PM
06-01-2012, 03:08 PM
Hate it for all my friends from Danville. So close, so many times.
06-01-2012, 03:09 PM
The Mercer County Titans became the first team to win back-to-back 12th Region titles since Pulaski County won in 2000 and 2001.
06-01-2012, 03:13 PM
Prep Baseball: Long's walk-off homer gives Mercer second straight 12th Region title
Titans score four runs in final at-bat to beat Danville 7-5, return to state tourney
By MIKE MARSEE
[email]marsee@amnews.com[/email]
9:36 p.m. EDT, May 31, 2012
Mercer County is getting pretty good at doing the impossible.
No one expected the Titans to do what they did in last year’s state baseball tournament, and few thought they could repeat as regional champions this year with a drastically different team. And how about a show of hands from those who thought they could do it when they trailed by two runs going into their last at-bat?
But they believed it was possible, and they wrote one of the most dramatic endings imaginable to win their second consecutive championship.
J.T. Long hit a walk-off home run in a tie game to give Mercer a 7-5 victory over Danville in the 12th Region Tournament final Thursday night at Admiral Field, capping a four-run rally in the seventh inning and igniting an uninhibited celebration.
A two-run deficit didn’t seem like too much to the Titans, even with only three outs remaining.
“We knew, two runs, we can do that, especially in this ballpark. One swing of the bat, that’s all it is,” Long said.
At batting practice earlier in the day, Shope had shown his players the video clip of the Titans’ improbable comeback against Pleasure Ridge Park in last year’s state tournament, when a dropped fly ball capped a four-run comeback that sent them to the championship game.
He said he knew his players came into their final at-bat with confidence because what they had done in the past.
“When they came in in the bottom of the seventh, I said, ‘Boys, we get three outs this time. We’re not down to one,’” Mercer coach Jeremy Shope said. “They knew, they believed.”
“Just like we’ve always done, never give up, just like last year with PRP,” right fielder Seth Heath added.
Long’s game-winning home run was the last of four straight hits for Mercer (23-12), which became the first team to repeat as 12th Region champion since Pulaski County in 1999 and 2000.
The Titans head back to the state tournament Monday, returning to Whitaker Bank Ballpark in Lexington for a 1:30 p.m. first-round game against either St. Xavier or Male.
“It’s nice after never winning a regional championship to win back to back. It’s very nice,” Heath said. “We’ve just got to keep our confidence up and keep it going. (I’m looking forward) just to being back under the lights and on that field, to have that same feeling I had last year.”
A year ago, the Titans’ run took them all the way to the state finals. But the loss of eight seniors gave this year’s team a much different look and gave many reason to believe that another team would win the 12th Region.
“We’ve kind of used that all season long, everybody saying, ‘Coach, it’s going to be a down year. Coach, it’s going to be a rebuilding year.’ My speech has been all year, ‘We’re not rebuilding, we’re reloading,’” Shope said.
While they were reloading, the Titans knew others were taking shots at them, and they used that for motivation.
“After people were saying that we were down, for us to come back and win this region again, that’s huge,” Long said. “That’s huge to show everybody how hard we’ve worked and all the hours we’ve put in getting better,” Long said.
While the Titans celebrated their victory with family and friends outside their dugout, Danville’s players sat in stunned silence in their dugout. The Admirals had come within two outs of winning their second regional title in four years and their third in seven years, only to see it slip away.
“To battle that way and lose a game like that is heartbreaking, especially for those seniors and how hard they’ve worked,” Danville coach Paul Morse said. “To lose it that way, it’s heartbreaking. That’s about all you can say.”
No. 13 Danville (31-10) had doubled its lead with an insurance run in the top of the seventh inning, and relief pitcher Andrew Lasure had retired the first six batters he had faced — four of them on strikeouts — after coming on in the fifth inning.
He got the leadoff man in the seventh, too, but then everything changed. Alex Guay singled up the middle, John Ingram singled to left field and Heath slipped a hit into right field that was only a few feet from being a potential game-ending double play.
“Three or four feet one way or the other direction, and Long doesn’t even get a chance to come to the plate,” Morse said. “Andrew made good pitches. They got three ground ball hits there, the balls were down in the zone, and they just hit holes.”
Guay scored easily on the hit by Heath, who batted .500 in the tournament, pinch-runner Chris Goodman came in behind him on a throwing error with the tying run, and Heath moved to second on the error.
First base was open when Morse came to the mound to confer with Lasure and the Danville infielders, but Morse said he didn’t give much thought to intentionally walking Long, the Mercer cleanup hitter.
“Not really. I just really thought that we could roll him over on a ground ball and get an out there, and if we had to, walk the next guy,” he said. “We weren’t going to give him a pitch that he could hit. That wasn’t necessarily a hanging breaking ball, but he put the bat on it. Looking back at it now, yeah, I wish I would’ve walked him.”
Long’s home run ended brought a sudden end to a captivating championship game.
The lead changed hands three times in 5 1/2 innings, with Will Graham’s pinch-hit single giving Danville a 4-3 edge in the sixth. The Admirals scored used three straight hits, including an RBI single by Rhodes Bell, to tack on a run in the seventh.
Winning pitcher Jackson Stoeckinger gave up both of those runs on six hits in 2 1/3 innings in his first appearance in some six weeks after suffering a fractured left ankle, but he also limited the damage and gave the Titans a chance to win.
“It’s been a while,” Stoeckinger said. “That first batter I was a little nervous, but after that it was all right, I settled down.”
Stoeckinger and starter Jon Banks allowed seven hits — the same number Mercer got — and the Titans didn’t commit an error. Danville had three errors.
Danville starter Austin Baxter walked the first two batters he faced and went to a 2-0 count on the third when he was taken out of the game. Tyler Beldon allowed three runs (one was unearned) on four hits in four innings before Lasure took over in the fifth.
Long singled home Mercer’s first run in the third inning after a two-out double by Heath, and Guay had a two-run double in the fourth to give the Titans a 3-2 lead.
Danville tied the game in the fifth on a two-out single by Dowell Harmon and took the lead in the sixth on Graham’s two-out pinch hit.
“That’s a huge hit. He’s been doing a great job coming off the bench all year. He’s going to be a big player for us next year,” Morse said.
Lasure drove in the Admirals’ first run in the first inning with a sacrifice fly, and he made it 2-0 with a two-out home run to right field in the third before Mercer rallied for the first time.
“This game was a lot like our season. We’ve had lots of highs and lots of lows. We’ve had lots of adversity, but we grew from that, and we were able to capitalize today,” Shope said.
The Titans now look to make the most of their second trip to the state tourney. They’ll face a tough opponent Monday — No. 3 St. Xavier and No. 7 Male will complete a suspended game tonight to decide the powerful 7th Region — but Shope said they’ll carry confidence with them thanks to their success last season.
“We go into things to try to win them and let it play out and see what happens,” he said. “We do have a tough draw right off the bat, but it can only get a little easier from there.”
12th Region Tournament
At Danville
Semifinal
Danville 101 011 1 — 5 7 3
Mercer County 001 200 4 — 7 7 0
Austin Baxter, Tyler Beldon (1), Andrew Lasure (5) and Lasure, Dowell Harmon (5). Jon Banks, Jackson Stoeckinger (5) and Alex Guay. W—Stoeckinger. L—Lasure. 2B—Harmon (D), Seth Heath (MC), Guay (MC). HR—Lasure (D), J.T. Long (MC).
http://www.centralkynews.com/amnews/spor...4039.story
Titans score four runs in final at-bat to beat Danville 7-5, return to state tourney
By MIKE MARSEE
[email]marsee@amnews.com[/email]
9:36 p.m. EDT, May 31, 2012
Mercer County is getting pretty good at doing the impossible.
No one expected the Titans to do what they did in last year’s state baseball tournament, and few thought they could repeat as regional champions this year with a drastically different team. And how about a show of hands from those who thought they could do it when they trailed by two runs going into their last at-bat?
But they believed it was possible, and they wrote one of the most dramatic endings imaginable to win their second consecutive championship.
J.T. Long hit a walk-off home run in a tie game to give Mercer a 7-5 victory over Danville in the 12th Region Tournament final Thursday night at Admiral Field, capping a four-run rally in the seventh inning and igniting an uninhibited celebration.
A two-run deficit didn’t seem like too much to the Titans, even with only three outs remaining.
“We knew, two runs, we can do that, especially in this ballpark. One swing of the bat, that’s all it is,” Long said.
At batting practice earlier in the day, Shope had shown his players the video clip of the Titans’ improbable comeback against Pleasure Ridge Park in last year’s state tournament, when a dropped fly ball capped a four-run comeback that sent them to the championship game.
He said he knew his players came into their final at-bat with confidence because what they had done in the past.
“When they came in in the bottom of the seventh, I said, ‘Boys, we get three outs this time. We’re not down to one,’” Mercer coach Jeremy Shope said. “They knew, they believed.”
“Just like we’ve always done, never give up, just like last year with PRP,” right fielder Seth Heath added.
Long’s game-winning home run was the last of four straight hits for Mercer (23-12), which became the first team to repeat as 12th Region champion since Pulaski County in 1999 and 2000.
The Titans head back to the state tournament Monday, returning to Whitaker Bank Ballpark in Lexington for a 1:30 p.m. first-round game against either St. Xavier or Male.
“It’s nice after never winning a regional championship to win back to back. It’s very nice,” Heath said. “We’ve just got to keep our confidence up and keep it going. (I’m looking forward) just to being back under the lights and on that field, to have that same feeling I had last year.”
A year ago, the Titans’ run took them all the way to the state finals. But the loss of eight seniors gave this year’s team a much different look and gave many reason to believe that another team would win the 12th Region.
“We’ve kind of used that all season long, everybody saying, ‘Coach, it’s going to be a down year. Coach, it’s going to be a rebuilding year.’ My speech has been all year, ‘We’re not rebuilding, we’re reloading,’” Shope said.
While they were reloading, the Titans knew others were taking shots at them, and they used that for motivation.
“After people were saying that we were down, for us to come back and win this region again, that’s huge,” Long said. “That’s huge to show everybody how hard we’ve worked and all the hours we’ve put in getting better,” Long said.
While the Titans celebrated their victory with family and friends outside their dugout, Danville’s players sat in stunned silence in their dugout. The Admirals had come within two outs of winning their second regional title in four years and their third in seven years, only to see it slip away.
“To battle that way and lose a game like that is heartbreaking, especially for those seniors and how hard they’ve worked,” Danville coach Paul Morse said. “To lose it that way, it’s heartbreaking. That’s about all you can say.”
No. 13 Danville (31-10) had doubled its lead with an insurance run in the top of the seventh inning, and relief pitcher Andrew Lasure had retired the first six batters he had faced — four of them on strikeouts — after coming on in the fifth inning.
He got the leadoff man in the seventh, too, but then everything changed. Alex Guay singled up the middle, John Ingram singled to left field and Heath slipped a hit into right field that was only a few feet from being a potential game-ending double play.
“Three or four feet one way or the other direction, and Long doesn’t even get a chance to come to the plate,” Morse said. “Andrew made good pitches. They got three ground ball hits there, the balls were down in the zone, and they just hit holes.”
Guay scored easily on the hit by Heath, who batted .500 in the tournament, pinch-runner Chris Goodman came in behind him on a throwing error with the tying run, and Heath moved to second on the error.
First base was open when Morse came to the mound to confer with Lasure and the Danville infielders, but Morse said he didn’t give much thought to intentionally walking Long, the Mercer cleanup hitter.
“Not really. I just really thought that we could roll him over on a ground ball and get an out there, and if we had to, walk the next guy,” he said. “We weren’t going to give him a pitch that he could hit. That wasn’t necessarily a hanging breaking ball, but he put the bat on it. Looking back at it now, yeah, I wish I would’ve walked him.”
Long’s home run ended brought a sudden end to a captivating championship game.
The lead changed hands three times in 5 1/2 innings, with Will Graham’s pinch-hit single giving Danville a 4-3 edge in the sixth. The Admirals scored used three straight hits, including an RBI single by Rhodes Bell, to tack on a run in the seventh.
Winning pitcher Jackson Stoeckinger gave up both of those runs on six hits in 2 1/3 innings in his first appearance in some six weeks after suffering a fractured left ankle, but he also limited the damage and gave the Titans a chance to win.
“It’s been a while,” Stoeckinger said. “That first batter I was a little nervous, but after that it was all right, I settled down.”
Stoeckinger and starter Jon Banks allowed seven hits — the same number Mercer got — and the Titans didn’t commit an error. Danville had three errors.
Danville starter Austin Baxter walked the first two batters he faced and went to a 2-0 count on the third when he was taken out of the game. Tyler Beldon allowed three runs (one was unearned) on four hits in four innings before Lasure took over in the fifth.
Long singled home Mercer’s first run in the third inning after a two-out double by Heath, and Guay had a two-run double in the fourth to give the Titans a 3-2 lead.
Danville tied the game in the fifth on a two-out single by Dowell Harmon and took the lead in the sixth on Graham’s two-out pinch hit.
“That’s a huge hit. He’s been doing a great job coming off the bench all year. He’s going to be a big player for us next year,” Morse said.
Lasure drove in the Admirals’ first run in the first inning with a sacrifice fly, and he made it 2-0 with a two-out home run to right field in the third before Mercer rallied for the first time.
“This game was a lot like our season. We’ve had lots of highs and lots of lows. We’ve had lots of adversity, but we grew from that, and we were able to capitalize today,” Shope said.
The Titans now look to make the most of their second trip to the state tourney. They’ll face a tough opponent Monday — No. 3 St. Xavier and No. 7 Male will complete a suspended game tonight to decide the powerful 7th Region — but Shope said they’ll carry confidence with them thanks to their success last season.
“We go into things to try to win them and let it play out and see what happens,” he said. “We do have a tough draw right off the bat, but it can only get a little easier from there.”
12th Region Tournament
At Danville
Semifinal
Danville 101 011 1 — 5 7 3
Mercer County 001 200 4 — 7 7 0
Austin Baxter, Tyler Beldon (1), Andrew Lasure (5) and Lasure, Dowell Harmon (5). Jon Banks, Jackson Stoeckinger (5) and Alex Guay. W—Stoeckinger. L—Lasure. 2B—Harmon (D), Seth Heath (MC), Guay (MC). HR—Lasure (D), J.T. Long (MC).
http://www.centralkynews.com/amnews/spor...4039.story
06-01-2012, 03:14 PM
All-Tournament Team
Jon Banks, Mercer County; Jake Barrish, Pulaski County; Zach Brown, Lincoln County; Rob Caudill, Danville; Tyler Devine, Mercer County; Kyle Gehring, Wayne County; Alex Guay, Mercer County; Dowell Harmon, Danville; Seth Heath, Mercer County; Andrew Lasure, Danville; Tyler Pasch, West Jessamine; Jacob Pelston, Somerset; Dusty Phelps, Southwestern; Jarred Price, Somerset; Matt Yeich, West Jessamine.
Most Valuable Player
J.T. Long, Mercer County.
Jon Banks, Mercer County; Jake Barrish, Pulaski County; Zach Brown, Lincoln County; Rob Caudill, Danville; Tyler Devine, Mercer County; Kyle Gehring, Wayne County; Alex Guay, Mercer County; Dowell Harmon, Danville; Seth Heath, Mercer County; Andrew Lasure, Danville; Tyler Pasch, West Jessamine; Jacob Pelston, Somerset; Dusty Phelps, Southwestern; Jarred Price, Somerset; Matt Yeich, West Jessamine.
Most Valuable Player
J.T. Long, Mercer County.