Monday’s first Class 4A baseball sectional semifinal at Center Grove had all of the elements one might expect from a regional final or a semistate showdown — probably because that’s when a clash between the top-ranked Trojans and No. 2 Mooresville should have happened.
We could discuss the infinite lack of wisdom behind the IHSAA’s tournament formatting, but that column has already been written and probably will be again. Alas, the myopic/blind draw had the state’s two biggest dogs facing off early, and it was the visiting Pioneers, behind a complete-game gem from pitcher Hogan Denny, who came away with a 3-0 triumph.
In the second semifinal game, Whiteland saw its up-and-down season come to an end in a 10-4 loss to Martinsville.
The morning opener, though, was the main attraction, and it lived up to billing as Denny and Trojans starter Ben Murphy dueled artfully for much of the contest. Murphy was overpowering at times, striking out eight in his 5 1/3 innings of work, while Denny preferred to pitch to contact and let his defense do the work.
Mooresville (26-3) got on the board in the second ining when Brody Bond singled, advanced to third on a walk and a sacrifice, then came in on a bases-loaded groundout by Kaleb Kestler. After escaping that jam without greater damage, Murphy settled down and faced the minimum nine hitters through the next three innings.
Center Grove, however, was unable to crack Denny in the meanwhile — though it had chances. The Trojans put runners in scoring position in all but two innings, but each time the Pioneer hurler was able to strand those runners by getting out of the inning with a timely groundout or fly ball.
Denny only struck out four hitters, but the Trojans (25-3-1) couldn’t get balls to drop into the right spots at the right time.
“We hit four balls really hard right at them,” Center Grove coach Keith Hatfield said. “That, I think, was the difference. Throughout the year, those balls were falling. They didn’t fall today.”
The Pioneers added a pair of insurance runs in the top of the sixth. Denny led off with a single, aggressively took third on a hit-and-run groundout and scored on an RBI base hit from Jack Robinson. Selby Barton drew a bases-loaded walk later in the inning to push Nick Wiley across with what turned out to be the game’s final run.
In the bottom of the seventh, the Trojans got a rally started when A.J. Beggs delivered a pinch-hit single up the middle with two out and Tyler Cerny was hit by a pitch to bring the tying run to the plate. Drew Culbertson then hammered a ball to deep center that appeared destined to bring at least two runs home, but Mooresville center fielder Robinson pulled the ball in as he fell to the ground at the warning track, ending the threat.
“We’ve seen that ball go out a lot,” Hatfield said of Culbertson’s final swing.
Instead, a team that scored just over 10 runs per game this spring was shut out for the first time at the wrong time.
“Our pitchers, without a doubt, threw well enough for us to win,” Hatfield said. “We just couldn’t come up with a big hit.
“That’s how it was today. I thought we did a decent job at the plate, but we just left too many guys on base. When we have as many guys on second as what we did today, we have to do better than that. We still hit quite a few balls hard — just right at them.”
Whiteland (11-16) fell into an early 5-0 hole in the first two innings, then got pushed to the brink when the Artesians scored five more in the bottom of the fourth. Needing at least one run in the fifth to keep their season alive, the Warriors got four. Caden Wilburn reached on an error and scored on a double by Julian Prescott, who then scored on a Donavin Woodall single. Drew Helton plated Maalik Perkins with a groundout, and Woodall came around on a base hit by Kayden Ferguson.
Martinsville (15-13) stretched the lead back out with three runs in the bottom of the inning, then got one more in the sixth to walk it off.
“Give credit to them,” Whiteland coach Scott Sherry said of the Artesians. “They punched us in the mouth, and we didn’t take it very well. They did what they needed to do, and we just couldn’t string anything together off of them.”
The Warriors graduate four seniors but bring back a ton of players who gained valuable experience by getting thrown into the deep end this spring.
“You hope they learned some some valuable lessons,” Sherry said. “You hope they learned that they’ve got to work at it, that they just haven’t arrived. They’ve got to get better to compete at the level that we play at.”
Competing at a high level hasn’t been a problem for the Trojans, who will still have high-level college prospects up and down the roster — but saying goodbye to 10 seniors, including four lineup regulars and a couple of valued pitching arms, will be difficult.
“This group’s been through hell and back,” Hatfield said. “There’s going to be a lot of shoes to fill. … It’s going to be hard to leave this group — and it’s going to be hard for the juniors to lose that senior group, too. This group was very, very tight-knit; they were together all the time. So it’s going to be bad for them, too, not just for us as coaches.”
