[Stardust]

The Holy Cross baseball team picked a good time to snap out of its recent funk of playing “small ball.”

It was “small ball” that helped set up the game-winning run the Indians scored in the bottom of the seventh inning of Saturday’s Touchstone Energy All ‘A’ Classic quarterfinal round game against Walton-Verona.

After junior right fielder Michael Hewitt led off the bottom of the seventh of a 1-1 tie by getting hit by a pitch, senior Sam Marson bunted him to second and one out later junior shortstop Conner Callery singled him home to give the Indians a 2-1 victory at Whitaker Bank Ballpark in Lexington.

The win advances Holy Cross (17-6) into a semifinal game at 8 a.m. today against Lexington Christian, which defeated Prestonsburg, 4-0, in another quarterfinal game on Saturday. The semifinal was originally scheduled to be played at 6 p.m. last night, but early-morning rain pushed the start of the quarterfinal games back almost two hours from their original 9 a.m. start time leading to the decision by tournament organizers to complete the quarterfinal games on Saturday and then play the semifinals and championship game today.

Louisville DeSales will face Glasgow in this morning’s second semifinal.The championship game is scheduled to begin at 12:30 p.m.

Holy Cross coach Mike Holtz said he was confident that Marson would get the bunt down, but that his team has struggled in that area the last couple of weeks.

“That’s part of his game and he can handle the bat pretty well, but we hadn’t done very well at it lately,” said Holtz. “It was a mental thing where we just couldn’t get bunts down. We’d hit line drives to pitchers, pop them up, miss them, foul them off and the guys doing it were guys who were good at doing it.”

Holtz said he thought some of the troubles were because his team had gotten, “a little mentally fatigued,” after playing a tough stretch of the games the past couple of weeks that included the All ‘A’ Classic Ninth Region tournament, the Doc Morris Scholarship Tournament, an All ‘A’ Classic sectional tournament game at Danville, a Northern Kentucky Athletic Conference game against St. Henry and a 35th District seeding game against Holmes.

To help ease the pressure, Holtz had the team play wiffleball during part of practice this past Tuesday.

“We just needed to relax and have fun playing this game,” said Holtz. “We just wanted to clear our heads. This is what you do in your backyard when you’re a little kid. ”

There was plenty of tension throughout Saturday’s game though as both starting pitchers – Walton-Verona senior Christian Lohr and Holy Cross senior Kyle Fuller - were dominant and scoring chances were minimal.

Both went the distance: Lohr pitched 6 2/3 innings, allowed just three hits, one earned run, walked two, hit four batters and struck out five, while Fuller went all seven innings, allowed three hits, one earned run, three walks and struck out 10.

Walton-Verona (20-9) took a 1-0 lead in the top of the second when senior catcher Zach Greene led off with an infield single, moved to second on a wild pitch and scored one out later on sophomore shortstop Zach McWhorter’s single to right.

Fuller didn’t allow a hit over the final five innings, although he did got out of a fifth-inning jam when Walton-Verona senior Tyler Roth led off with a walk, was sacrificed to second, then stole third, but was left stranded.

Holy Cross tied the score in the bottom of the third when senior catcher Jeff Guidugli singled with one out, went to third when Callery reached on an error and scored on junior third baseman Blake Tiberi’s single to right.

Holtz said he knew Saturday’s game was going to be much tougher than the 13-3 win Holy Cross posted over Walton-Verona on April 3.

“I know people thought because of that this might be easy, but that’s why I started Kyle,” said Holtz. “You can’t play a second game in this tournament unless you win the first and he’s our ace. He just keeps getting better every time out.”http://nky.cincinnati.com/apps/pbcs.dll/...305050096/