Scholastic Notebook – 04/11/2014

By: HSSN Staff
Friday, April 11, 2014 | 3:10 PM

Have strong pitching and possess the ability to win close games. It sounds like the Pirates recipe for success this year and last.

But it’s also the two main ingredients involved in the biggest turnaround stories so far in WPIAL baseball.

The Butler Golden Tornado is one of the big surprises of the early season. Butler is 6-2 overall and in first place in Section 1 of Class AAAA. Section 1 also is home to perennial baseball powers North Allegheny and Seneca Valley. This is the same Butler team that went 2-16 last season and did not win a section game.

So what gives? Well, coach Todd Erdos’ team has struggled at times offensively, but the Golden Tornado’s pitching has been terrific. Butler’s pitching wasn’t too swell in a 13-4 non-section loss to Pine-Richland. But in the other seven games, Butler has allowed a total of six runs and not more than one run in any of those six games.

And Butler has shown an uncanny ability to win close games, especially late. Butler is 3-0 in league play and the wins have been 2-1 against New Castle, 1-0 against Fox Chapel in nine innings and 2-1 against North Allegheny. In every game, Butler won in the last inning.

Against New Castle, Jesse Stavisky pitched six strong innings and Butler won when Logan Maxwell had a run-scoring single in the bottom of the seventh. Butler beat Fox Chapel with a run in the top of the ninth.

Then on Wednesday, Butler edged North Allegheny, 2-1, when Ryan Denny was hit by a pitch with the bases loaded in the seventh. Butler’s Mark Gross gave up only one run in six innings of that game.

Time will tell if the pitching holds up and if the Golden Tornado can continue to win close games. North Allegheny and Seneca Valley will undoubtedly be teams to reckon with yet this season. But there are only six teams in Section 1 and three go to the playoffs. Butler seemingly has a good shot at being one of those three teams this season.

Slow start for Seneca Valley

Seneca Valley has been in the WPIAL Class AAAA baseball championship three consecutive years and was expected to be one of the top teams again this season, despite losing some key players to graduation. But the Raiders are 2-4 so far.

Seneca Valley has played some tough competition. The losses were to Hampton (8-2), Moon (9-6), Pine-Richland (6-5) and North Allegheny (6-1). The loss to North Allegheny came in 12 innings.

Freshman Cole is Hot

Serra Catholic had a stud freshman pitcher five years ago in Alain Girman, who went on to win 31 games in his career, which ties for the second-most in WPIAL history.

Now Serra appears it might have another talented freshman. No one is ready to say Cole McCombs will be as good as Girman, but McCombs is off to quite a start for a ninth-grader. He has a 2-1 record and has 36 strikeouts in 17 innings.

Freshman Phenom

Jordan Geist.

Get used to the name. You’ll probably be hearing it a lot in track and field circles the next few years. Or at least shot put circles.

Geist is only a freshman at Knoch High School, but he already has broken the 30-year-old school record in the shot put with a heave of 61 feet, 4 inches. It is also one of the top 20 throws in the country this season.

Roundball Time

The top senior boys and girls basketball players in the WPIAL will be playing Saturday in the annual Roundball Classic at Geneva College.

The Roundball, run by Allen Deep, is a four-game all-star event with two girls games and two boys games. The girls games are at 2 and 4 while the boys games are at 6 and 8. The final boys game matches Class AAAA against A. Usually, Class AAAA plays AAA in this event, but Deep thought the talent was so good in Class A this season that he thought it would be a good game if Class A played AAAA.

Deep has remarked that this might be the best talent he has had in the event. Twenty of the players in the games were all-state selections.

The games will include all of the 11 seniors who made the MSA Sports All-Netters teams. They are Fox Chapel’s Erin Mathias, Central Valley’s Seairra Barrett, Seton-LaSalle’s Yacine Diop, Hempfield’s Monica Burns and Seton-LaSalle’s Naje Gibson on the girls side, and New Castle’s Malik Hooker, Hampton’s Ryan Luther, Seton-LaSalle’s Dale Clancy, New Castle’s Anthony Richards, Lincoln Park’s Elijah Minnie and OLSH’s Cam Johnson on the boys side.

Where Are They Now?

Ian Happ, a former Mount Lebanon baseball standout, is a sophomore at the University of Cincinnati and is one of 50 players in the country to be named to the Golden Spike Award watch list. The Golden Spike goes to the top amateur player in the country.

Through 31 games in the 2014 season, Happ is batting .356 with a .558 slugging percentage. He has 10 doubles, three home runs and 23 RBIs for Cincinnati, which has a 13-18 record.

Tags: Butler, Knoch