NORMAL – Sometimes it just isn’t your night.
It certainly wasn’t the Providence baseball team’s night Monday.
A fundamentally sound O’Fallon team pounced on Providence (24-10) early, as the Celtics surrendered five runs in the first two innings, setting the stage for a 9-4 loss that ended Providence’s season.
O’Fallon now will play Saturday at the Class 4A State Tournament at DuPage Medical Group Field. The tournament is a one-day event with the semifinals early in the day and the third place game and championship following in the afternoon and early evening. O’Fallon will play Lake Park in the semifinals at 1 p.m. Saturday.
After Providence went quietly in the first inning, O’Fallon wasted no time flexing its muscle. Haidyn McGill coaxed a walk to start the game before Will Millard tattooed a ball to the right centerfield gap that brought McGill all the way around to score, giving the Panthers a 1-0 lead.
Celtics starter Kyle Hussey settled down enough to record back-to-back strikeouts and a belief that they might be able to hold O’Fallon to only one run. But that hope was squelched when Garrett Meyer swatted a home run over the left field fence to boost the O’Fallon lead to 3-0.
Cain Headrick got one of those runs back by belting a solo home run for Providence in the second inning, but O’Fallon kept charging, following the same formula as the first inning, coaxing a walk and following that with an RBI triple, this time from Xavier Deatherage. Ethan Crouse then drove home Deatherage with a single to stretch O’Fallon’s advantage to 5-1.
The Panthers kept swinging with authority, stringing four more hits and four more runs together in the third inning to build a 9-1 advantage. Providence went through three pitchers in the first three frames and couldn’t find anyone to slow the O’Fallon offensive attack. The third reliever, Drew Zemaitis, settled in later and actually pitched very well to finish the game, but the damage clearly had been done.
Meanwhile, O’Fallon hurler Mike Larson danced in and out of trouble all game. But after allowing that solo shot to Headrick and one more run to cross on a wild pitch in the fourth, Larson’s ability to keep large innings from materializing kept Providence in scramble mode the rest of the way. He gave way to reliever Danny Mack in the sixth inning.
Mack followed the blueprint Larson left behind, allowing two Providence baserunners to reach to appear to start a rally only to have that squashed by Mack inducing a ground ball that turned into a nifty double play. He faced more trouble in the seventh and wilted a bit but a three-base error allowed Providence to extend the game further than it should have and allowed them to post a pair of unearned runs.
Providence finished with only four hits in the game and only one after the fourth inning, an infield hit from Ryan Jefferson.