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INDEPENDENCE – His answer took you aback, though showed his youth in an endearing sort of way.
Trey Cornell, what is going through your mind right now?
“Nothing, really,” he insisted amid a plethora of photos, smiles, hugs and general chaos. “I’m just ready to get out of here. I’ve been here for awhile.”
Forgive him. He’s a freshman.
You had to leave it to East Buchanan baseball teammate Will Hansen for a little more emotional response. He’s one of only two seniors on the Bucs roster and was on the receiving end of a throw to first base that officially ended his club’s 5-4 upset of fifth-ranked North Linn in a Class 1A substate final Tuesday night.
“Sitting at first, that ball came to me to end the game, I was just really excited,” Hansen said. “I was like ‘Oh, this is it!’ The moment hit me. There is a lot going through my head right now. Excited as a senior. Our goal was this.”
It is the first state tournament qualification for EB (17-9), which lost twice in the regular season to its Tri-Rivers Conference mate and dropped its final four regular-season games. The Buccaneers regrouped, upended No. 10 Don Bosco in last week’s district final (by an identical 5-4 score, no less) and now this.
On to Carroll, where they will play Lynnville-Sully in the 2-7 quarterfinal Monday afternoon at 4:30. Lynnville-Sully (24-2) is the 1A field’s second seed.
“We lost to North Linn earlier in the season, but we all believed we could beat them,” Cornell said.
“These guys, they bounce back well,” said East Buchanan Coach Thomas Crawford.
It was Cornell’s double to left field in the top of the sixth inning that scored two runs that put East Buchanan on top for good, 4-3. He is EB’s catcher, his twin brother, Tristan, its shortstop.
That ended the night for North Linn starting pitcher Mason Bechen, whose wonderful career was sabotaged the past two seasons by recurring shoulder problems. The all-stater went 3-for-4 at the plate in his final game, stranded in the on-deck circle as Will Sommerfelt chopped to third base with the tying run at second.
That was the theme of the game for North Linn (25-4), which left 12 men on base, at least one in every inning, 10 in scoring position, including the bases loaded twice. One hit away all night, though give EB pitchers Brady Van Scoyoc and Keenan Pals credit for making pitches when they had to.
“We just didn’t execute, didn’t do the small things we normally do well,” said Travis Griffith, in his final game as North Linn head coach. “Disappointed. Thought we hit the crap out of the ball, just right at them. We could not come up with the big hit.”
Cael Benesh’s two-out RBI single gave North Linn a quick 1-0 lead in the first, with East Buchanan going ahead in the fourth on a two-base fielding error at third base that scored two runs. NL countered to go back ahead in the bottom half, 3-2, on a Braden Wheatley suicide-squeeze bunt single and Bechen run-scoring double.
A pair of walks gave EB runners at first and second with one away in the sixth, with Trey Cornell picking on the first pitch he saw from Bechen after a meeting at the mound with Coach Griffith and lining it into left, the ball scooting past the left fielder and to the fence on the quick turf field.
“I knew I was going to be a fastball first pitch,” Cornell said. “I didn’t want to go deep in the count and get a slider, so I was going to swing if it was near the strike zone. I just got a hold of it. He left it down the middle.”
East Buchanan got a huge insurance run in the top of the seventh on what looked like an intentional first-and-third pickle play. That was significant because North Linn began the bottom of the inning with back-to-back walks.
A bunt moved the runners along and a Wheatley sacrifice fly made it 5-4. But that was it.
EB started four sophomores and four freshmen Tuesday night. Young but obviously talented.
“They’ve played a lot of baseball, a lot of it together,” Crawford said. “They all love baseball, hang around together after practice. We’re a young team, but they’re all pretty good at letting the water roll off their back and going on to get the next one.”
