By Scott Vanscoy (For OzarksSportsZone.com)
Aurora, Mo. — The Aurora Houn Dawgs won the Clever Right Off the Bat Tournament Friday night, defeating the Springfield Catholic Irish, 7-4. It was a battle between two of the top teams in the area and both had outstanding pitching performances from their aces. Aurora junior Trey Mulholland and teammate Clayton Reed teamed up to defeat Catholic, which was throwing Missouri State signee Jeremy Rader. Rader kept the Houn Dawgs in check for six innings as he only allowed one walk and two hits, striking out 14. With his pitch count getting high, Catholic coach Courtney Spitz decided that he could finish the game off with his bullpen.
Mulholland only lasted three and two-thirds innings, allowing the Irish four runs. It was up to Reed to hold the Irish in check for the rest of the game.
“It was kind of hard coming in, at first, down 4-1,” said Reed. “It was a tough situation but I made the most of it, continued to throw strikes, and get outs. They definitely hit the ball hard. They are a good hitting team. We were just able to make plays behind me. Tonight my best pitch was my curve ball, that 1-2, 0-2 curve ball I was throwing. We go out there and compete every game and try our hardest. It was a very good game.”
After six innings Rader was pulled from the mound. The Catholic bullpen imploded, allowing six walks in the seventh inning, giving Aurora a chance to take the lead, but sophomore Coleman Morrison came in and shut it down. Reed matched Morrison for the rest of the game. Reed kept the Irish from scoring even though they had runners in scoring position in the sixth, seventh, and eighth innings. However, after Aurora had scored three off of Morrison in the ninth, giving them a 7-4 lead, Reed was determined to end the game; he got Catholic three up, three down. Catholic only managed four hits off of Reed during his time in the game. They hit the ball hard at times but they hit it right at people.
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“We played six innings of great baseball and in that seventh inning, for whatever reason, we couldn’t find the strike zone,” said Spitz. “If you give teams an opportunity late, especially a well-coached and very good team like Aurora, they are going to capitalize on it. We didn’t finish off the game; we came up three outs short. I’ve got full trust in all my guys, any guy can get the job done, it’s just, in that situation you try and do whatever you can to get to the next guy, find the strike zone and keep winning the game. We did a good job, we got out of the inning with a tied ballgame and we had chances to win it in extras and just didn’t come up with that key hit. If you put the ball in play you have a chance, and we did that, but it just wasn’t our night tonight. We’ve got a very good team, it’s the first loss of the season for us, so we’ll learn from it, build on it, and be better for it.”
Aurora coach James Hoffman was proud of his guys and their tenacity.
“We knew we would be facing Jeremy (Rader) and he’s a good player, a good all-around player,” said Hoffman. “We knew he had good velocity. Our kids, they love the fastball. His off-speed was working really well tonight and he had to use it a lot. If he’s consistently challenging us with fastballs, not keeping us off-balance, it’s a different story score-wise early. They did a good job keeping our kids off balance all night. The kids were just resilient all night long, they played very patient. Walks helped us out a lot and then just timely hitting at the end.”
Once Rader left the mound the Houn Dawgs saw their chance to take the lead but they couldn’t get the big hit.
“We never know what’s going to happen,” said Hoffman. “Health-wise, we’ve got a lot of basketball kids who aren’t ready arm-wise to throw a lot so we’re still trying to figure things out. That’s not the reason that we got down. We gave up four runs, just miscues in the outfield and walks, those are all things that we can correct. I don’t know how many years we’ve played in the championship and come away with it. Usually it’s us and Catholic, a couple years ago it was us and New Covenant, we had Catholic in our pool. Tonight is big; tonight might be bigger than any of the others because of losing last season and not really knowing what we’ve got. We are learning as we go.”
Aurora 7, Springfield Catholic 4
Aurora 010 000 303 — 7
Catholic 004 000 000 — 4
