Basic outlasts Faith Lutheran for 5A region baseball title — PHOTOS
Basic and Faith Lutheran needed a second game to determine the Class 5A Southern Region baseball champion.
With temperatures flirting with triple digits and both teams’ pitching staffs taxed, it was the Wolves who had enough left in the tank to survive a marathon finale and win the region title.
Basic pounded out 12 hits and had all nine batters reach base, propelling the Wolves, the Mountain League’s No. 2 seed, to a 12-5 home win over Faith Lutheran, the No. 3 seed from the Mountain League, to earn the region title Saturday afternoon.
“They’re just very confident,” Basic coach Gino DiMaria said. “They believe in themselves. They believe their teammates are going to pick them up. They’re confident that they know that when they come to play, they’re going to be competitive all the way through.”
That was needed for Basic (22-7) after a 6-3 loss to Faith Lutheran (21-16) in the first game Saturday morning. Since it was the first loss for Basic in the double-elimination tournament, it forced a winner-take-all second game for the region title.
Both teams advance to next week’s 5A state tournament at UNR. Basic will be the South’s No. 1 seed and face Reno High at 3:30 p.m. Thursday on the opening day of the tournament. Faith Lutheran faces Northern champion Bishop Manogue at 1 p.m. to start the day.
“It feels great. We worked so hard,” Basic third baseman Matthew Kelley said. “We went through a lot as a team early in the season, but we worked through it. We don’t stop fighting. Our team, we got a bunch of dogs, and we’re going to fight till the last out.”
Faith Lutheran lost to Basic on Thursday and had to beat Palo Verde in an elimination game Friday to get to the region title game and qualify for state while Basic had Friday off.
The Crusaders got six strong innings out of sophomore Keegan Burke, who held Basic without a hit through the first five innings, to win the first game. But the rigors of the region tournament and having to go through the losers’ bracket got to the Crusaders in a second game, which lasted more than three hours.
Basic, which played as the road team in the second game, drew 11 walks against seven pitchers in the second game. The Wolves also had two of their position players who are committed to Division I schools step up on the mound to limit their pitching worries.
Oregon commit Andruw Giles came out of center field to start and gave Basic four-plus strong innings. He held Faith Lutheran scoreless for the first three innings, which helped the Wolves hold a 7-2 lead going into the fifth.
When things got dicey in the fifth, Kelley, a Miami (Florida) commit, came in relief and helped minimize the damage as Faith Lutheran added three runs in the inning to cut the deficit to 7-5. He pitched a scoreless final two innings as Basic pulled away.
“We wanted to stretch them some innings today and get a little bit more work,” DiMaria said. “Andruw did a hell of a job, Matthew did a hell of a job. I’m proud of them both. Faith made it interesting, and it’s like, ‘Here we go again.’ But they came in, kept their composure and kept throwing it until our bats came alive.”
In the third inning, Kelley scored on a throwing error attempting to steal third base. Then Troy Southisene blasted a two-run homer to put Basic ahead 3-0.
The Wolves drew four straight walks in the fourth inning, and Dallon Cegavske’s two-run double capped off a four-run inning.
Cegavske had a sacrifice fly, Kelley drove in two more runs on a single, and Giles had an RBI single in a five-run sixth inning to blow the game open.
“It was a long week. Everyone was tired,” Kelley said. “They were tired, we were tired, but we just knew we were going to put the bat on the ball and let the game happen.”
DiMaria said Basic will need to clean up its errors heading into the state tournament. The Wolves had three in the second game Saturday, all throwing errors.
One led to Faith Lutheran’s Macen Collura reaching base to start the fourth inning and eventually scoring. Another happened with two outs in the fifth that led Eli Leone to score and kept the inning alive for Dylan Swanson, whose two-run single capped off a three-run fifth.
“Reno, Manogue, the two teams up there, it’s going to be a very competitive state (tournament) either way,” DiMaria said. “We’re going to play good competition. We have to be ready. We have to clean our game up. We (had) a little too many errors in this tournament, and we got to clean that up.”
Contact Alex Wright at awright@reviewjournal.com. Follow @AlexWright1028 on X.