CHANDLER–Senior starting pitcher Cennedy Murrell threw six innings of two-hit ball with some help from his defense and Sandra Day O’Connor rode a six-run third inning to defeat Basha, 6-1, in a pivotal matchup between two Top-five 6A schools. The win comes just one day after O’Connor lost at home to archrival Mountain Ridge, the no. 2 team in the AIA 6A rankings.

 

“This is what we're here for,” O’Connor manager Jeff Baumgartner said. “We want to play the best all the time. For us to be able to come out behind Cennedy challenging those hitters and get after it, it's fun to see our players step up and have some success like that after the loss last night.”

 

The no. 4 Eagles (6-3) took advantage when junior Bradyn Barnes, the starter for the No. 3 Bears (7-3) lost his command in the top of the third. After O'Connor junior first baseman Josh Butler led off the inning with a double, Barnes hit Hustyn Wheeler, the No. 9 hitter, with a pitch. He then issued back-to-back walks to senior second baseman Kolt Kurzman and senior outfielder Blake Tigges to bring home the Eagles' first run.

 

Barnes and Basha appeared to catch a break when senior catcher Preston Lucas, O’Connor’s best hitter, tapped a soft grounder between the pitchers’ mound and third base for what looked like an easy force play at home plate. But Barnes slipped as he attempted to throw home and his desperate heave sailed past junior catcher Jordan Vigil, allowing both Wheeler and Kurzman to score.

 

“If someone's gonna struggle, let him struggle, and then be able to jump on his mistakes,” Baumgartner said.

 

That two-run error knocked Barnes out of the game, and sophomore O’Connor outfielder Ky McGary greeted junior Basha reliever Nate Hoffman with a double into the right-center field gap, bringing in two more runs for the Eagles. McGary then scored on a single from junior designated hitter Brody Tewes to add another run. The young center fielder, who has excelled this season as the O'Connor's cleanup hitter, finished 2-for-3 with two doubles, a walk and two RBI.

 

“I'm just going up there thinking I want to hit the fastball but react to anything else,” McGary said. “I'm just getting on time with that fastball so it doesn't get blown by me and just trying to react and get RBIs in for my team.”

 

Murell, O’Connor’s ace, was hardly overpowering against Basha’s talented bats, recording just two strikeouts. But that was by design, as Murell focused on pitching to contact and generating weak fly balls and pop-ups, mostly avoiding the Bears’ barrels aside from two ultimately harmless doubles which wound up counting as Basha’s only two hits of the game. Murell finished with one unearned run and just two hits and two walks allowed in six innings of work.

 

 

“That’s my game plan every time I throw,” Murell said. “Just work down, live low [in the strike zone], ground balls, fly balls. I’m not really worried about striking people out, just [getting] weak contact and letting my defense work.”

 

His defense was working on Wednesday. Basha hitters did smash several fly balls, but nearly all of them hung in the air long enough for McGary in center field or Tigges in right field to make the catch.

 

Tigges in particular had an eventful day, catching nine fly balls in right field–accounting for nearly half of the 21 total outs the Eagles recorded in the game. Several of those catches required Tigges to sprint from his usual positioning towards the right-field foul line and occasionally even into foul territory to make the play.

 

Tigges, a converted infielder, is in his first season playing right field full time and Baumgartner is thrilled with the way Tigges has grown accustomed to the position.

 

“The first week we put him in right field and he battled that sun, oh man you'd think he'd never seen the sun before,” Baumgartner said. “But man, he's catching every ball and he's catching them with confidence… It's fun to see a kid put in that kind of work and then have that kind of success and see it pay off.”

 

Basha’s only run of the day came thanks to a rare O’Connor defensive miscue. Vigil led off the bottom of the second by smashing a hard grounder up the middle, and sophomore shortstop Jake Sanko raced over from shortstop to glove the ball. But Sanko’s throw sailed over Butler’s head at first base. Senior pinch-runner Brandom Campbell advanced to third on a double from sophomore outfielder Max Madrid, putting runners on second and third with nobody out.

 

But Murell righted the ship by inducing a pop fly to junior Nico Rijo-Berger and then two straight fly balls to Tigges in right. The first flyout allowed Campbell to tag up and score from third, but the second allowed Murell to escape the inning with minimal damage.

 

“We just need to have more competitive at-bats,” Basha manager Jim Schilling said. “We threw away a lot of at-bats today.”

 

The silver lining for Basha, however, came in the form of five mostly stellar innings from Hoffman out of the bullpen. Hoffman struggled to get out of the third after entering in a bases-loaded, no-out situation, but his arsenal of devastating breaking balls kept O’Connor’s bats off balance for the rest of the game, recording seven strikeouts–six of them looking.

 

“We expect our guys to go in there and throw strikes and get people out, and he did that,” Schilling said. “So we're very proud of him for that.”

 

The Eagles received a noteworthy performance from their reliever as well, as Butler entered in the seventh and also looked dominant. The hard-throwing righty, whose fastball reached as high as 89 mph on Basha’s in-house radar gun, worked around a two-out error in the seventh to pick up the save. He also added two strikeouts of his own.

 

Both teams have quick turnarounds after Wednesday’s game. O’Connor has just one day off before a chance to avenge Tuesday’s loss when it travels to Mountain Ridge on Friday, while Basha will host Tolleson Union on Thursday.