If Scottsdale Notre Dame Prep should go on and win the Division II state baseball championship, it won’t be because it simply was handed to the Saints.

The third-seeded team would have gone through the loser’s bracket in the double-elimination event, and defeated the top two seeds in the process, No. 1 Chandler Seton Catholic and No. 2 Phoenix Greenway.

Seton became the latest to fall on Tuesday night (May 7) as Notre Dame scored single runs in the fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh innings and held off a rally by Seton in the bottom of the seventh for a 4-3 victory at Camelback Ranch in Glendale.

Notre Dame advances to a 4 p.m. game on Thursday (May 9) at Camelback Ranch against No. 4 Tucson Sahuaro, which eliminated No. 10 Nogales 4-3 on Tuesday. The Notre Dame-Sahuaro contest will be followed by the winner’s bracket game between No. 5 Phoenix Sunnyslope, the defending champion, and No. 6 Tucson Ironwood Ridge.

Things did not appear as though they were going to go Notre Dame’s way in the top of the first inning, when Seton right-hander M.J. Villegas struck out the side in order.

To make matters worse, Seton took a 1-0 lead in the bottom of the first on an infield hit and an error.

Notre Dame did not get its first hit until the fourth inning, when it scored its first run to tie it at 1. The Saints did it with an infield hit and Nick Affronti’s first of two triples on the night.

Meanwhile, Notre Dame right-hander Danny Stolper was keeping Seton off-balance. He nearly was forced to leave the game in the second inning after a hard shot by Villegas hit him in the leg. Stolper would receive help from his defense, which came up with three double plays.

Notre Dame scored a run in the fifth on a single by Cooper Samples, a run in the sixth on an error and a run in the seventh on a sacrifice fly by Ryan Scott for a 4-1 lead.

But Seton wasn’t done.

The Sentinels produced two seventh-inning runs on a walk, a double and an infield hit to chase Stolper.

Notre Dame coach Brian Fischer brought in submariner Jeremy Horgan with the tying run at first, and he responded by getting a strikeout on a foul tip to end the game.