Baseball: Kent, Assumption finish off Central
- Font Size:
- Default font size
- Larger font size
By Shannon Heaton | Monday, June 16, 2008 |
Assumption’s Jake Kent felt like he hadn’t lost anything in his pitching arm by waiting nearly 48 hours to finish his start on the mound Saturday.
Though Central nearly made a contest of it — erasing a 3-0 lead built Thursday afternoon at Central’s Brady Street diamond with three runs in its first two innings — Kent and his teammates wasted little time finishing off the Blue Devils 13-3 in five innings of Mississippi Athletic Conference play at Assumption’s diamond.
“Just staying fresh, arm-wise; I had to stay loose the whole time,” said Kent of the wait, necessitated by storms Thursday night.
Kent’s opposite number, Central starter Eric Irons — who also pitched Thursday — homered in the first inning, with RBI hits from Connor Gilland and Dallas Burke in the second tying the game.
“It was a mistake pitch; I hung it and I shouldn’t have thrown it,” Kent said of the gopherball to Irons. “It was just a bad pitch call.”
However, Kent faced the minimum nine batters in the last three innings, finishing the game with six strikeouts. At the same time, Assumption (13-3, 5-0 MAC) — aided considerably by six Central errors — re-energized its offense behind a six-run third inning and four-run fourth.
“We’ve focused a lot on our hitting, up and down the lineup. We have guys throughout the lineup that can all hit the ball,” said first baseman Ben Bush after a nine-inning stretch in which he reached base all five times he came to the plate, with four runs scored, three RBIs and his first varsity home run, which came in the second inning of the second game.
“I definitely think we still have some work to do. We’re playing really well, especially in the MAC, but there’s still room for improvement.”
Knights coach Bill Argo agreed: “We’re trying to make it that way,” Argo said of creating offensive chaos at every spot in the batting order. “With two strikes, we’re trying to get a ball below our hands and stay under it. We’re trying to fight (bad) pitches off and put the ball in play.”
Doing that was more problematic for the Blue Devils
(8-7, 3-5 MAC) than coach Jay Ryan wanted.
“We talked to the guys about getting back in the game, one base hit at a time, and we did. Then we kicked the ball around,” he said. “Our pitches made decent pitches, but we didn’t give them any support.”
Weather allowed a second game to begin, but thunderstorms suspended play with one out in the bottom of the fourth inning, with Central batting and trailing 8-2. That game will be finished — weather permitting — Thursday at noon.
The Knights will then make up an earlier-scheduled doubleheader against West that evening.
Contact the sports desk at (563) 383-2285 or sports@qctimes.com.
del.icio.us
Digg
NewsVine
Fark
redditMore Stories By Shannon Heaton
» More Varsity Stories
- Quad-City Times girls basketball all-area teams
- GoodPlayers: The All-Metro team
- All-Eastern Iowa Boys Basketball Team
- All-Western Illinois Boys Basketball Team
- Illinois area high school softball outlooks
- Illinois area high school baseball outlooks for 2008
- Polite moves up to head basketball coach at United Township
Highest Rated Articles from the last 7 Days
- Technology News Articles
- Computers, MP3, Phones & More. See Product Pics, Specs & Reviews.
- www.NexTag.com
- 2008 Diet Of The Year:
- Finally, A Diet That Really Works! Seen On CNN, NBC, CBS & Fox News.
- www.Wu-YiSource.com
- Cheap Airfare
- Compare multiple travel sites. Discount web fares made easy.
- www.LowFares.com
- Ads by Yahoo!
