Monday,
May 19, 2014
By Cory K. Doviak
NJS.com Editorial Director
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Kevin Lawlor about to connect on a home run leading off the fifth inning in NV/Old Tappan's 4-1 win over Pascack Valley in the Bergen County Tournament quarterfinals on Sunday in Emerson. |
EMERSON – Sometime between its preseason ranking as the No. 1 baseball team in North Jersey and it win last week in the Round of 16 of the Bergen County Tournament against Mahwah, which by no means was a given, the Northern Valley/Old Tappan baseball team had just about hit rock bottom. In a 10-game stretch the Golden Knights lost six times with the only consistency coming in the bloated errors column on the scoreboard. At the end of it was a three-game losing streak that included losses to Pascack Valley, Don Bosco Prep and rival Demarest by a combined score of 22-4. The rough patch led to a team-wide fraying of nerves and also a shuffling of the deck of in terms of who deserved to be out there trying to catch ground balls.
No one felt the pressure more than senior shortstop Steve Marotta.
“Earlier in the year maybe we were playing a little bit too tight. We were predicted to be the No. 1 team in the preseason and maybe we were trying to play like it instead of just playing our game,” said Marotta. “I wouldn't say I was nervous, but maybe I was just trying to make every play look fantastic instead of just making easy plays look easy like they should be.”
The team could have been torn apart by the struggles, but it has been just the opposite. The turnaround has been total and it has come at just the right time.
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Ryan macNaughton had two of Pascack Valley's four hits, two well-struck doubles in the first and third innings. |
A team that was supposed to be built around pitching and defense has added the defense part as of late and the Golden Knights won their sixth straight game, playing nearly error free in a 4-1 win over Pascack Valley in the quarterfinals of the Bergen County Tournament on Sunday at Emerson High School.
For all of the Palisades Interstate Parkway type of potholes it has had to drive through to get here, the Golden Knights are right where they want to be at this time of the season. Fifth-seeded Old Tappan will play No. 8 Don Bosco Prep in next weekend's county Final 4 and is on top of its game heading into Monday's matchup against Northern Highlands in the opening round of the North 1, Group 3 playoffs.
“Pascack Valley beat us twice this year, so we knew that we were up against a good team, but at tournament time Old Tappan is different,” said senior John O'Reilly, who threw a complete game four-hitter to outduel PV left-hander Ryan Vasel, who was the winning pitcher in both of the regular season matchups. “Everything we want to achieve is still right out there for us and we know we have at most 20 days left to our season, so we are going to make the best of each one of those days and see where we are at when it is over.”
Old Tappan (18-7) is not the type of team that is going spray the ball over the park and hang big innings on an opponent. Instead the Knights know how to work a pitcher, move runners along, force defensive mistakes and then take advantage of them. They took a 2-0 lead in the top of the second inning when Jim Fasano was hit by a pitch with the bases loaded and Tyler Sokolich then scored with two outs on an error made on a sharply hit ground ball put in play by Kevin Lawlor. Tim Moraski's two-out double in the top of the third scored Doug Ewen all the way from first base to make it 3-1.
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With two runners in scoring position and no outs in the bottom of the third, Old Tappan starter John O'Reilly got three straight hitters to look at called strike 3s on the outside black. |
Having scratched to get a lead, Old Tappan was on the verge of giving it right back in the bottom of the third when Ron Villone drew a one-out walk and went to third when Ryan MacNaughton smoked his second double of the game deep into the left centerfield gap. With two runners in scoring position and no outs, O'Reilly was smack dab in the middle of the turning point of the game. And then he struck out three straight hitters, all of them looking at called strike 3s on the outside corner of the plate.
“John O'Reilly is a bulldog and that is the situation that he loves. He has a lot of intensity and a lot of passion and you could see him get fired up right there,” said Christian Runza, Old Tappan's senior catcher. “Three straight strikeouts on three straight called strikes right on the outside corner. It doesn't get any better than that.”
From there, Pascack Valley head coach Will Lynch knew it was going to be an uphill climb for his team.
“We had second and third with no outs and he set the side right down with three straight strikeouts. That was big time by him,” said Lynch. “Up against a pitcher like that we knew we weren't going to get inning after inning with multiple opportunities and we didn't get what we could when the opportunity came up in that inning.”
Pascack Valley's only run of the game came in the bottom of the second when Jon Bonica walked leading off, took second on a pickoff throw that went awry (the only OT error of the game) and got to third on a wild pitch before scoring on Dan Corrigan's two-out, bloop single into short leftfield. The Indians might have had some momentum when their first two batters of the third made it into scoring position, but after O'Reilly mowed down the next three hitters, Pascack Valley managed just one more hit the rest of the way.
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Pascack Valley catcher Ryan Orr tagging out Justin Schettino on a play at the plate in the top of the second inning. |
Kevin Lawlor put the cherry on top of the win when he crushed a home run to straight way centerfield leading off the fifth. That was the first home run hit at Emerson High School this season even if it was followed up by two more in the second game of the day between Don Bosco Prep and Bergen Catholic.
Vasel (7 IP, 4 R, 4 ER, 10 H, 5 K, 0 BB, HBP) went the distance for Pascack Valley and MacNaughton had two of the four hits and the only two extra base hits for the Indians, who fell to 15-8 on the season heading into their North 1, Group 3 state sectional tournament opener on Monday against Demarest.
Lawlor (2-for-4, HR, RBI, R, SB), Justin Schettino (2-for-3) and Doug Ewen (3-for-4, R), who reached base in all four of his plate appearances, had multiple hit games for Old Tappan. Brandon Issa (1-for-3, R), Moraski (1-for-3, RBI), Sokolich (1-for-3, R) and Fasano (1-for-2, RBI) all had singles in Old Tappan's 10-hit attack while O'Reilly (7 IP, 2 R, 0 ER, 4 H, 7 K, 5 BB) improved to 5-2 on the season.
“At this time of the year it is all about good pitching and good defense. We had that streak where we were making five or six errors and giving teams two extra innings worth of at bats and it was tough to win games that way,” said Old Tappan head coach Tim Byron. “If we can play clean like we did today and like we have lately...we are in a good position right now. I like it.”
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