Eli Tavares entered the game in the bottom of the fifth inning and made an immediate impact in Westwood's 2-0 win over Indian Hills on Wednesday afternoon.

OAKLAND – Raise your hand if, at the beginning of the season, you predicted that the stakes for Wednesday afternoon’s game between Westwood and Indian Hills would be a Top 5 seed in the Bergen County Baseball Tournament.

Anyone? Anyone?

Westwood is not that much of a surprise. The Cardinals’ program has been on the rise, they have a nice mix of youth and experience and had high expectations coming into this season, which now includes a 14-2 record after a crisply played 2-0 victory in Oakland on the cutoff day for county tournament qualification. At last night’s seeding meeting, Westwood earned and was given the No. 3 seed behind Don Bosco Prep and Ridgewood.

“It’s a great accomplishment and recognition for what we have done so far, but the work is just beginning,” said Westwood head coach Nick Urbanovich, whose team has a first round bye before playing the winner of St. Mary/Fair Lawn in Round of 16 on Wednesday. “We have a lot of tough games. We have Fort Lee on Friday, Glen Rock on Saturday, Ramsey Monday, a county game and Ramsey again. You want to play important games in May and it is lined up for us right now.”

But Indian Hills? The Braves have come out of nowhere and after they beat Westwood, 1-0, on the road on Monday in the first of the two-game series, they were 12-3 with a legit shot of being right up there in the bracket with the ‘Big Boys.’ Still, at 12-4, Indian Hills is the No. 6 seed with a first round bye and a Round of 16 matchup against either Old Tappan or Leonia.

It is a totally different vibe then the one in the preseason where the outlook was clouded by some significant injuries. Senior Sean Pimley, who would have been at the top of the pitching rotation, fractured an ankle. Junior Kenny DeFeo tore his ACL during soccer and neither has pitched an inning this season. Senior Ryan Pulice, who pitched four games this year with the Braves winning all four, has now been lost to a torn rotator cuff.

Senior Brady Diers went the distance for Indian Hills, which fell to 12-4 on the season.

“Our kids have just really, really stepped up. I say it all the time; I have told you many times, we have the greatest kids. This senior class we have is just tremendous. They are all from Oakland, they all grew up together and everyone came to my baseball camp since they were 6 years old,” said George Hill, who is in his 25th season as Indian Hills’ head coach. “I know them all their whole life and I used to say to them, ‘Just think what we are going to do when you are in high school.’ It looked bleak because of injury and it has been tough, but, I’ll say it again, what a group of kids.”

Outside of what this series meant to county seedings and the league title race in the Big North Patriot Division where it is a four-way dogfight between these two teams, Pascack Hills and Ramsey, the two games taken independently were high-level high school baseball games. Three total runs were scored in 14 innings.

On Monday, Indian Hills used three different pitchers each going around the lineup a single time to shutout Westwood. Yesterday Brody Diers (7 IP, 2 R, 2 ER, 6 H, K, 4 BB) took the ball with the intent of going the distance, which he did on 99 pitches.

He wound up on the short a pitcher’s duel against Westwood sophomore Jack Walsh, but Diers held the high-powered Westwood offense off the board through the first five innings, he was efficient and he used the stellar defense behind him to keep the Braves in the game until the final pitch.

“We have a great team around here, we have great chemistry and we love the game. That is why we have been succeeding. We have been playing together our whole lives and it is just great to have success with guys you have been playing with since childhood,” said Diers, who will play at Montclair State University next year. “We have been in the loser’s bracket of the county tournament [AKA The BIT] the last two years, so it feels great to be back in the county tournament and have a lot more to play for.”

Indian Hills makes it hard to break through and cut Westwood off every time it tried through the first five frames. Shortstop James Zwolinski handled a hard ground ball with the bases loaded and two outs in the first inning. In the second, rightfielder Cole Babaian robbed Andrew Dillingham of a leadoff hit with a diving catch and Zwolinski turned a 6-6-3 double play to end that inning. The Braves’ lone error of the game came with one out in the fourth and was followed with a bloop base hit by Dillingham, but Diers picked a runner off of second and third baseman Nick Sendrowski made a smooth back-hand pick and throw across the diamond for the final out.

Sophomore Jack Walsh threw a 4-hit shutout for Westwood, which improved to 14-2 on the season.

Then, in the fifth, Steve Klein led off with a bomb to straight away centerfield that went all the way to the wall and the race was on in the still scoreless game. Klein, a standout running back on Westwood Group 2 state championship football game, was flying when he rounded second, then was waved around third and right into the path of LJ Renshaw, the Indian Hills catcher who came a bit up the line to snag Zwolinski’s throw as the cutoff man.

The full speed collision at the plate was inevitable and it ended with Renshaw in possession of the ball, the out recorded and Klein, the leadoff hitter and centerfielder, relegated to the bench for the rest of the game.

That opened a spot for Eli Tavares, who had a tough 48 hours after Monday’s loss when he ran through a stop sign and was thrown out by a wide margin at third base in a game that the Cardinals lost by a run. As usually happens, Tavares was tested right away as he recorded two of the three outs in the bottom of the fifth with the second being a good read on a long flyball of the bat of Zwolinski with two outs and the runner at first off on first contact.

Westwood finally scratched a run across in the top of the sixth. Mike Carcich, the Muhlenburg-bound senior first baseman, was hit by a pitch leading off, went to second on Walsh’s sacrifice bunt and, after a Joe Klein single moved him to third, scored on a fielder’s choice when Sam Arcieri beat the rap at first.

Walsh worked a 1-2-3 sixth and Diers got the first two outs of the seventh before Tavares popped up again. He drew a walk and stole second to get into scoring position and made it 2-0 when MD Cabral singled back up the middle to make it 2-0.

“Going three [on Monday’s loss] was definitely not a great move now looking back on it, but in this game I got a chance to redeem myself in a clutch moment,” said Tavares, who also made a nice play moving to his right to pick off a line drive for the second out of the seventh inning. “Mentally I just tried to come in and do better. It’s just a thing where you have to lock in and know you have to do it for your team. We needed this win.”

And it was Walsh (7 IP, 0 R, 0 ER, 4 H, 2 K, BB, 90 pitches, W) that delivered it. He retired six of the first seven hitters he faced, started a 1-2-3 double play with the bases loaded and one out in the third and allowed just two base runners over the final four innings to seal it.

“I was really looking forward to pitching this game and my mentality was to throw strikes and get batters out. I was throwing a lot of fastballs for strikes, the curveball was pretty good, too,” said Walsh, a sophomore right-hander. “I think we have the chance to compete with any team in the county. We already beat Bergen [Catholic], we beat some other big teams and we are playing with a lot of confidence.”

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