The Emporia A-16 Blue team recovered from a pounding in Game One of its doubleheader Tuesday at Andover, using strong defense and the pitching of Jacob Loucks to notch a 3-2 victory and earn a split.
Loucks, who had a double in each game at the plate, pitched a complete game.
“Overall, he was pretty much dominant,” Blues coach Jerry Cook said. “There was times he let his defense work. Dusty Maas played shortstop the second game and made two or three unbelievable plays to get us out of an inning.”
Maas and second baseman Brian Keisler turned a fifth-inning double play with the bases loaded to end one Andover rally with just one run scored. In the sixth, with the bases loaded again, Maas went into the hole to get a ground ball and fired a bullet to Keisler for a forceout.
“It was an awesome throw,” Cook said. “His legs were in the air, and he wasn’t set, and he just made an awesome play and got us out of it again.”
In Game One, Emporia got two runs in the top of the first, but it was all downhill from there as Andover scored 12 unanswered runs to end the game in the fourth inning with a 12-2 win. Ethan Hall started the game for the Blues and fell victim to some shoddy defense.
“He gave us a chance to win the game,” Cook said. “He gave us three innings the first game. We didn’t come prepared. We kicked the ball around, really couldn’t play catch, really didn’t act like we wanted to be there.”
Following some schedule shifting, the Blues will next be in action in the Burlington AA tournament on Saturday and Sunday. Cook will look for more competitiveness from his team this weekend.
“This team, I think, is a very good team when they wanna come and play and win,” Cook said. “I understand that it was 100 degrees when we got down there, but we just didn’t come to play.”