Article Photos

Fact Box

Tuesday's baseball quarterfinal scores

Division 1

• Bay City Western 15, Hudsonville 8

• Saline 4, Birmingham Brother Rice 3

• Warren DeLaSalle 2, Hartland 1

• Temperance-Bedford 13, Detroit U-D Jesuit 4

Division 2

• Mount Pleasant 10, Pinconning 5

• East Grand Rapids 1, St. Joseph 0

• Milan 9, DeWitt 1

• Orchard Lake St. Mary's 10, Detroit Country Day 3

Division 3

• Muskegon Oakridge 6, Alcona 1

• Shepherd 4, Birch Run 1

• Kalamazoo Christian 4, Grandville Calvin Christian 2, 10 innings

• Blissfield 4, Ann Arbor Gabriel Richard 2

Division 4

• Frankfort 4, Norway 0

• Beal City 10, Bay City All Saints 0

• Climax-Scotts 11, Petersburg-Summerfield 5

• Sterling Heights Parkway Christian 5, Porland St. Patrick 0

Advertisement

By MICHAEL

WIGMAN

News Sports Writer

TRAVERSE CITY All it took to end the Alcona Tigers magical run through the Division 3 state baseball tournament was an 80 mile per hour tailing curve ball from the right arm of Jamie Potts.

That pitch from the Muskegon Oakridge sophomore confounded the Tigers at the plate through seven complete innings. The end result: a 6-1 Oakridge victory and a no-hitter for Potts on Tuesday afternoon in a quarterfinal game played at Traverse City Central High School.

"We've ridden that horse all year," Oakridge coach Brandon Barry said. "It's kind of a cross between a curve and a slider, and it is absolutely nasty."

Oakridge (25-9) now moves on to play Blissfield, a 4-2 winner over Ann Arbor Gabriel Richard, in the state semifinals on Friday at Bailey Park in Battle Creek, while Alcona (21-19) returns home with its heads held high. The Tigers won the first regional crown in school history in any sport, and used solid pitching and defense to go much further in the tourney than most observers expected.

"It's easy to be disappointed at this point, but at the same time these kids have accomplished something nobody ever has at our school," Alcona coach Seth Coffing said. "Top eight in the state, and there's about 150 other schools that can't say that. That's something they can always be proud of."

Unfortunately for Alcona, its defense fell apart on Tuesday, as six fielding errors, combined with the hard-throwing Potts, doomed any chance it had against the Eagles.

"Obviously that (errors) played a part in the game, but that kid that was pitching for them was pretty dominant," Coffing said. "When you don't get any hits off somebody it's going to be pretty hard to win the game."

Potts recorded 12 strikeouts and three walks. Wade Oliver took the loss for Alcona, throwing a complete game seven hitter with four strikeouts and three walks. Only three of the Eagles' runs were earned though, as Oliver only allowed one extra base hit.

"He (Oliver) was around the plate like he has been. Had a few more walks then we have had, but when you're pitching against good hitters you're going to try to be a little more picky than you normally would be," Coffing said. "I thought he threw a great game. He's probably never seen that type of hitting team."

Oakridge broke through in the top of the second inning using the first Alcona error of the game to bring two runs home. Oliver had gotten the first two batters to fly out to center field when Cale Gould reached on a single, Geoff Eely walked and Adam Carmean singled to load the bases. Justin Wall sent a grounder to short that should have ended the threat, but Alcona's Michael Kilbourn bobbled the ball trying to pick it up, and on the throw to first threw the ball into the right field fence. Gould and Eely ran home on the play as the mostly pro-Oakridge crowd went berserk.

No one knew at that moment two runs would be enough for the Eagles, but they got a good idea of what was to come when Potts came back out to the mound for the bottom half of the inning. His tailing curve, which starts high coming in directly at a batter's head and in an instant breaks straight across the plate for a strike, was right on the mark.

"To stick out over the plate with that thing coming at you takes a lot of guts for a hitter, and he's really baffled a lot of kids this year with that pitch," Barry said.

Potts sat down all three Tigers in a row on strikeouts in the second, and came back out in the third inning to do the same. In the fourth inning, after Oakridge had used a Koburn Patino single to score Potts from second for the 3-0 lead, he struck out two of the three Tigers he faced.

"We had heard he was a good pitcher, and he was definitely all he was cracked up to be," Coffing said.

Alcona finally broke through in the bottom of the fifth to make it 3-1. Potts hit leadoff batter Austin Scott, and a fielding error allowed Oliver to reach base. A double steal that saw Oliver race to second, and Scott run home on the throw gave the Tigers a run, but still no hit.

A disastrous sixth inning ended any hope of a late comeback for Alcona though, as the Eagles put two more runs on the board. Alcona should have escaped the inning unscathed, but a dropped third strike for the third out and an errant throw to first gave the Eagles new life. With two runners on, they capitalized with an RBI single by Wall. The Eagles scored another run when Oliver threw a wild pickoff throw to third base and Gould ran home to make it 5-1.

"That was huge. We needed that run because we had stagnated through the middle of the ball game," Barry said.

Oakridge added another run in the top of the seventh when Kyle Pascavis stole home from third base for the 6-1 lead.