Sunday,
May 17, 2015
By Cory K. Doviak
NJS.com Editorial Director
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Cullen Dana threw a two-hit shutout and did not walk a batter to lead Don Bosco Prep to a 5-0 win over Northern Highlands in the quarterfinals of the Bergen County Tournament. |
DEMAREST – It is a little bit of a stretch to say that Northern Highlands had Don Bosco Prep ace Cullen Dana on the ropes in the early innings of Saturday’s Bergen County quarterfinal. The Highlanders were not exactly knocking the cover off the ball or flooding the bases with runners, but they were making Dana throw a lot of pitches and there was even a little warm-up action in the Bosco bullpen as the Dana needed 53 pitches to get through his first three innings of work.
For the defending champion, undefeated No. 1 seed and the top-ranked team in the state, that is what passes for adversity nowadays as Dana soon found the touch on his curveball and finished with a complete game, two-hit shutout that took a total of 93 pitches to complete.
Don Bosco Prep’s offense was similarly sluggish early on, but also great late as the Ironmen got a leadoff home run from Riley Iafrate, the No. 9 hitter, in the bottom of the fifth inning and scored all of their runs in their final two at bats of a 5-0 victory at Northern Valley/Demarest High School.
“I saw that they had the bullpen up for a little bit there and we had a chance early to kind of ruffle [Dana], but then he got on a roll and that made it tough,” said Northern Highlands head coach Paul Albarella. “You have to do everything right against a team like that to have a chance and even then it is not going to be easy.”
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Matt Dipasupil had one of Northern Highlands' two hits, a two-out double in the top of the third inning. |
Highlands’ starter, junior right-hander Hunter Abdalla was not perfect, but was close enough to it to keep the game scoreless through the first four innings. He stranded two runners in the first, pitched around a leadoff single by Brian Meerholz in the second, worked a 1-2-3 third and left two runners in scoring position in the fourth to keep the eighth-seeded Highlanders even.
Dana was in considerably less trouble in the early going other than running deep counts. He went to 3-2 counts on the first two hitters of the game, but still worked a 1-2-3 first and then gave up a leadoff single to Andrew Keenan in the second before coming back to strike out the next three hitters. Highlands’ only other baserunner was Matt Dipasupil, who hit a two-out double in the top of the third. Dana struck out the next hitter and the next 12 after that.
Dana faced just two hitters over the minimum, did not walk a batter, struck out 11 and needed just 40 pitches to complete the final four innings of his masterpiece.
“I did not have my curveball at all for the first three innings and I had to find a way to get it back. When I got that going in got me in a rhythm and it really helped a lot,” said Dana, a left-hander with a classic straight-over-the-top delivery. “It keeps you focused when the other guy is out there throwing up zeroes, too, but it is also nice when the offense gives you a couple of runs to work with and we eventually came around and did that.”
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Bosco's Josh Shaw connecting on a two-run single in the sixth. |
Actually, it was Iafrate who did so after falling behind 0-2 in his at bat leading off the fifth before coming back to get even a 2-2.
“He got be down 0-2 early and I fought back a little. Then he hung one over the plate and I was able to put it over the fence,” said Iafrate, Bosco’s senior second baseman. “I knew I hit it well, but I wasn’t about to start jogging around the bases. I got into a sprint and once I got around first I saw it was over the fence I took my foot off the pedal a little bit.”
With that swing Bosco showed it can play long ball from any spot in its lineup, and then showed that it can play the small ball game as well. Alex Santos followed Iafrate’s blast with a single to right and Tyler Panno, the No. 2 hitter, then laid down the perfect sacrifice bunt. Josh Shaw followed with an RBI single and read the throw back into the infield and took second base. Shaw then moved up a base on a wild pitch and scored on a passed ball to make it 3-0. The Ironmen tacked on in the sixth with two more runs that included a clever piece of managing by Bosco skipper Mike Rooney. He sent up a Mike Stanziale, who drew a leadoff walk while pinch-hitting for Frank Nigro. Rooney then re-entered Nigro, his starting catcher, and that allowed him to put courtesy runner Tommy Courtney on first base to actually do the baserunning without burning another player.
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Highlands starter Hunter Abdalla threw four scoreless frames before giving up a run. |
Courtney, along with Santos, who drew one of three walks in the inning, scored on Shaw’s two-run single to make it 5-0. Although any of three players who were eligible to take first base on the leadoff walk would likely have scored anyway, it was a well-thought out use of high school rules.
Rooney has a lot to think about in the coming weeks as his team looks to equal the exploits of the 2007 Don Bosco Prep team that finished a perfect 33-0 with league, county, state sectional and outright state championships.
The Ironmen are nationally ranked by various publications that think there is an objective way to do such a thing and all of it could make the next couple of weeks as much a psychological test as a physical one.
“You have to make everything small when you are in our position and what I mean by that is you have to take it one pitch at a time and all of those trite sayings that you hear in baseball really ring true,” said Rooney, whose team will play Mahwah in next weekend’s county semifinal. “Once you start thinking about the big picture you really start to forget about what is right in front of you.”
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