Marquette baseball earned chance to defend 1A title

The Marquette baseball team entered this season coming off winning the Class 1A state championship and with all but three players returning to the diamond.

The obvious questions were: Can they make a return trip? And if they do, can they make it two straight titles?

“To be honest, we didn’t talk about it,” said Marquette coach Todd Hopkins, who has guided the Crusaders to four state trophies over the past seven years. “The kids knew at the beginning of the season, and we talked about it, how every game we play our opponent is going to want to rip our throat out. We had a target on our backs. But every single guy handled it like pros all year.”

With the first question answered after Marquette won the regional (over Newark 2-1), sectional (over Aurora Christian 5-1), and supersectional (over Fulton 6-3) championships, the quest for the second query begins at 10 a.m. Friday against Lexington at Illinois Field in Champaign.

Marquette enters the semifinal at 33-3 and on a 16-game winning streak. Lexington, which lost to the Crusaders in the opening game of the season, will take the field having recorded a 20-10 mark.

“We had two games in late April where we lost back-to-back games against Yorkville Christian and St. Bede, but the guys bounced right back,” Hopkins said. “Our [Tri-County Conference] was really good, and we only had one hiccup, and our nonconference schedule was pretty solid, so we are as battle tested as we can be.”

Marquette is hitting .338 as a team and averaging 8.5 runs per game, led by Sam Mitre (.465 AVG, 3 HR, 41 RBIs), Keaton Davis (.434, 3, 32), Alec Novotney (.405, 1, 20), Anthony Couch (.370, 3, 37) and Griffin Dobberstein (.340, 2, 20).

The top three pitchers have been Novotney (9-0, 0.12 ERA, 58 IP, 6 BB, 114 K), Couch (6-2, 2.52 ERA, 50 IP, 31 BB, 75 K) and Dobberstein (8-1, 1.12 ERA, 50 IP, 16 BB, 67 K).

“We just have to continue to do what we’ve done all season at the plate,” Hopkins said. ”I feel like we’ve swung the bats pretty well all season and hopefully we can keep that going this weekend against some pretty solid arms were going to face.

“Pitching-wise, [pitching coach] Brad [Waldron] does an outstanding job with our pitchers, and we brought on Jimmy DeAngelo [who pitched Hall to the win in the 2018 Class 2A state championship game] as the assistant pitching coach. The two have been so good for us. They both preach get ahead and stay ahead in the count, and the kids have that mentality.”

Hopkins said with the venue now at the University of Illinois and not Dozer Park in Peoria, the set routine they’ve had in the past will need a tweak or two.

“Off the field the past state trips in Peoria, we had a routine there,” Hopkins said. “We knew where we were going to stay, we knew where we were going to eat, we knew on Thursday night where we were going to take the guys for some fun. So, this year is new from that standpoint.”

For Hopkins, there are a few key things – beyond the runs and hits and outs – he feels are at the top of the list of ‘must dos’ when you reach the state finals.

“On the field, you don’t change how you’ve played all season in these two days,” Hopkins said. “You have to be yourself and you have to do the same things that got you to this point. You also, while it’s tough to do, you have to play relaxed.

“But the biggest key in my mind in these games is you can’t be afraid to lay it on the line knowing that possibly you weren’t good enough or the other team was just better. I tell the guys all the time, you don’t want to regret or 10 years from now look back and say, ‘I could have run out that grounder a little harder or I should have dived for that ball.’ You have to give every play everything you have, and, in the end, if you have to tip your hat to the other side then so be it.

“You just have to have the guts to lay it on the line.”