WNC Baseball: Wildcats Use Wild Finish to Upset No. 3 Cochise
Submitted by editor on Sat, 02/07/2015 - 12:03pm
Nothing short of a wild finish could separate Western Nevada College and Cochise College on the baseball diamond on Friday at Morse Field in Henderson.
Tied at 4 in the 10th inning, the Wildcats parlayed two wild pitches into a come-from-behind 7-4 victory over the third-ranked team in the country.
"They have a proud organization and standards, and so do we," said WNC coach D.J. Whittemore. "This was just a great junior college baseball game."
WNC loaded the bases with one out in the 10th inning before reliever Brad Danzeisen uncorked a pair of wild pitches that allowed Matt Young and DJ Peters to cross home plate.
"Their pitcher slipped on his landing foot on the first one and then on the next wild pitch they were intentionally walking (Corey) Pool. You hate to see that happen to a kid. It's happened to us before," Whittemore said.
Austin Andrews added a sacrifice fly to score Parker Woodley with the game's final run. Peters set the table for the winning rally when he doubled after Young was hit by a pitch.
Connor Zwetsch picked up the victory with four superb innings of relief. Cochise only scratched out two hits against Zwetsch and fanned eight times.
"Zwetsch was huge for us," Whittemore said. "He's been our best pitcher all year. We told him we were going to put him in the toughest spots."
The Apaches left 16 runners on base, including 13 through the first five innings.
"We were fortunate to still be around. That is what good teams do ... give themselves a chance to win even when they don't play great," Whittemore said. "Our guys deserve a lot credit. They were up at 4 in morning for the bus ride and they left the field at 8 at night."
The win raised WNC's record to 4-1 going into Saturday's doubleheader with previously unbeaten Cochise (4-1).
Max Karnos (1-0) started for the Wildcats, surrendering six hits and two runs in 3 2/3 innings.
Karnos escaped a two-out jam in the bottom of the first inning. After back-to-back singles by Darick Hall and Dan Hetzel, center fielder Jake Bennett gloved a liner by Jackson Overlund to end the threat.
The Wildcats weren't quite as fortunate in the second inning when Cochise rallied with two outs. Jorge Duarte and Bryan Nunez reached on two-out base hits, and Duarte came around to score the game's first run on an error by Peters. The unearned run threw Karnos out of rhythm momentarily as he walked the next two hitters. But he got Hall to ground out with the bases loaded to keep the Wildcats within a run.
Cochise scored another run in the third, cashing in on a pair of errors by the Wildcats, who committed five in all.
But WNC fought back in the fourth inning, scoring four times. Bennett started the rally with a triple and broke up the shutout by scoring on Kody Reynolds' groundout. Later in the inning, Tim Lichty scored on Jon Guzman's groundout, and Peters and Bradley Lewis crossed the plate when Pool's groundball to third was muffed.
Cochise pulled even in the fifth, scoring twice against reliever Kyle Thompson. Lichty, Peters and Andrews topped the Wildcats with two hits. Peters also scored twice. The Wildcats and Apaches will play a twin bill on Saturday starting at noon.
Fans can follow the Wildcats games through the live stats link in the baseball schedule on the new athletics website at www.wildcats.wnc.edu.
