Baseball: St. Bede routs Princeville, rolls into regional final

The St. Bede baseball team used a committee of pitchers and timely hitting from Aidan Mullane to move on to the Class 1A St. Bede Regional championship game with a 15-0, four-inning win over Princeville on Friday.

The No. 3-seeded Bruins will play No. 2 AlWood in the title game at 11 a.m. Saturday.

“We had a plan going in and that rarely works to get a few guys a couple of innings and then have them ready for tomorrow versus a real good team,” St. Bede coach Bill Booker said. “So we rode that and Mullane came up big a couple times for us tonight. He had been hitting into some bad luck lately, so it was good to see his hard work pay off.”

The biggest hit of the game came when Mullane came up in the bottom of the first inning with two outs and the bases loaded and delivered a big RBI single to put SBA up 3-0.

The hit also seemed to ignite the team as the Bruins plated four more to go up by a 7-0 tally after one inning of play.

“I was protecting againgst the fastball, and he threw me one right down the middle and I just tried to hit it hard and it turned out,” Mullane said. “It felt great to come through for my team and to get us rolling.”

The top of the first began with Alex Ankiewicz pitching around a couple of base runners to keep the Princes off the board for the first of his two scoreless innings.

Ryan Slingsby got the Bruins’ offense started in the bottom of the first with a base hit and Gus Burr put down a sacrifice bunt and reached on an error.

After Nathan Husser reached on an error to load the bases, Alan Spencer coaxed a walk to force in the game’s first run. Following Mullane’s RBI hit, Carson Riva supplied an RBI single and Geno Dinges walked before Slingsby singled in two more to make the score 7-0.

Neither team did anything in the second and the game moved to the third where Seth Ferrari took over on the mound for the Bruins and turned in a 1 2/3 scoreless frames. Ferrari turned it over to Spencer, who threw one pitch to end the fourth.

Meanwhile, the Bruins’ bats were back at it again as Mullane got it started with lead off single and Dinges and Slingesby worked walks before Burr drove one in on a sacrifice fly. The ninth run came in on a wild pitch to makeit9-0 afrer three innings.

The Bruins came to bat in the fourth looking to close things out and the offense delivered by scoring six runs in the frame on hits from Luke Tunnell, Spencer Mullane, Dinges and Slingsby to punch their way to the next round with a convincing 15-0 victory.

“We hit the ball and did the little things tonight. We are where we want to be.” Booker said.