Baseball: Strong pitching, three Britt doubles lift Newman past Eastland

STERLING – A Nolan Britt RBI double gave the Newman Comets a one-run lead in the first inning of Tuesday evening’s game against the Eastland Cougars.

In the third inning, Britt hit another RBI double, sparking a three-run rally. With all of that momentum – and strong pitching from Brendan Tunink and reliever Garet Wolfe – the Comets rolled to an 8-1 nonconference win in Sterling.

Tunink notched two strikeouts and caught a line drive around a hit batter in the top of the first inning.

In the bottom of the first, Kyle Wolfe singled as the leadoff hitter, then stole second during Jaesen John’s at-bat. With two outs, Britt ripped a double off the fence in left-center field to score Wolfe for a 1-0 Newman lead.

“When you get a big hit, it definitely gets some momentum going, gets the confidence up for everybody coming in, because then we string hits together,” Britt said. “And when you’ve got somebody on base going up to hit, it’s a lot better than being stranded with nobody on.”

After a scoreless second inning, Newman went back to work in the third. Up second, Tunink drew a walk, then Britt crushed another two-out double to left center, scoring his teammate for a 2-0 lead.

“It helps out a lot to get some runs in, and it brings my confidence up so much,” Tunink said. “I was pretty mad about yesterday since we got beat by kind of a lot [against Fulton], but we just gotta carry on [to the next game]. That really helped with [Nolan] getting those runs in. It made me feel a lot more confident that we got this in the bag.”

During Garret Matznick’s at bat, Britt stole third, then came home as Matznick singled to third; Matznick stole second while Garet Wolfe was up to bat, before scoring on a Wolfe single to right field for a 4-0 lead.

In the top of the fourth inning, Tunink struck out the side.

“Tuna had a great outing. He really pounded the strike zone, which is what we’re really trying to focus on this year,” Britt said. “He’s a great leader, and he definitely made it easier coming into the dugout, coming in to hit with zero runs on their side.”

Austin Van Landuit drew a leadoff walk in the bottom of the fourth, then stole second during Kyle Wolfe’s at-bat, reached third on a Wolfe single, and came home on a Tunink single off the center-field fence.

Van Landuit singled to center field to score Matznick in the bottom of the fifth, and Isaiah Williams came home on a catcher error for a 7-0 lead.

A Jaesen Johns groundout scored Kyle Wolfe in the sixth inning.

Eastland scored its first and only run in the top of the seventh. After a Huber leadoff double and Allyn Geerts fielder’s choice, Huber came home on a wild pitch.

Britt and Kyle Wolfe each went 3 for 4 as the leading Newman batters; Britt had two RBIs and three doubles. Matznick went 2 for 3 with one RBI.

In five innings on the mound, Tunink allowed one hit and zero runs, while striking out 11 and walking three. Freshman Garet Wolfe finished the win with two solid innings, surrendering one hit, one run and one walk, while striking out one.

“I felt pretty good [about my pitching performance]. I feel like I could’ve thrown a little more off-speed to keep them off-balance, but overall I think I did pretty good,” Tunink said.

“I feel confident [in Garet]. He’s a freshman, and after the whole preseason and seeing him, I’m confident that he’ll shut it down for us.”

Huber and Geerts each went 1 for 3 as the leading Eastland batters.

In four innings, the Cougars’ Max McCullough threw five strikeouts and conceded six hits, five runs and three walks. Trevor Janssen threw two innings of relief, allowing four hits, two earned runs and no walks, with two strikeouts.

“We shot ourselves in the foot a lot, a lot of errors, and they capitalized on them. I thought we pitched well,” Eastland coach Weston Burkholder said. “We played last night against Rock Falls, we didn’t have a practice to get ready for [Tunink]. We could’ve turned up the machine, but we didn’t get that time with back-to-back games, so I think we’ll be all right. Allyn Geerts made some great plays in center field, and the last one I think he lost it in the gray background with the ball.

“They did what we wanted to do – run – but we didn’t have a whole lot of baserunners. When you’re down chasing eight runs, it limits what you can do.”