It definitely wasn’t the prettiest win of North Pike’s postseason journey, but nonetheless the Jaguars pulled off a 2-0 victory over the Northeast Lauderdale Trojans to take a 1-0 series lead in the third round of playoffs.
“You’d always rather go up 1-0 than be down. They’re really tough though,” said North Pike head coach George Lott of the Trojans. “They’ve lost the first game of every series they’ve played. There’s going to be no quit in them.”
It wasn’t until the bottom of the fifth inning that the Jaguars were finally able to score two runs to take the lead. Jonah Bankston was walked and advanced to second base after a sacrifice bunt committed by Matthew Phillips. Jacob Gill stepped up to plate next and hammered a triple to right field for the Jaguars’ sole hit of the game. Bankston came home to score and give North Pike a 1-0 lead. Ben Coney was hit by a pitch in the following at-bat and would get caught trying to steal second base, which allowed Gill to advance home for the 2-0 lead.
“That was huge. We needed somebody to come up big and he did,” Lott said.
In the top of the sixth inning however, Northeast Lauderdale came close to bringing it even with the Jaguars once again. Their two lead-off batters, Lane Gordon and Andrew White, singled and advanced bases after a sacrifice bunt committed by Devin Sisson.
The next batter up for the Trojans hit a ground ball to North Pike’s first baseman Dallas Smith. who threw the ball home to Blake Dunaway. and the Jaguars were able to tag the scoring runner out who was on third base. The Trojans’ next batter flew out for the final out, and North Pike avoided a near collapse.
When asked about the team’s subpar hitting performance, Lott said the Jaguars have had trouble with slow pitching all year.
“I don’t think we had many quality at-bats. The good thing is we were able to get the job done,” Lott said. “We’ve got to swing the bat better. We’ve swung the bat and played small ball really well all year long. We just never could get into that today.”
Lott also commended the effort of Ben Coney, who picked up the win on the mound for the Jaguars with two strikeouts. Coney, who suffered a knee injury in the first game of the Jaguars’ previous series, came in and pitched.
The Jaguars travel to Northeast Lauderdale for the second game of the series at 6 p.m. on Thursday. If needed, the Jaguars will play the deciding third game of the series at home at 6 p.m. Friday.
