OKAWVILLE - It was déjà vu all over again at Blackburn College in Carlinville on Friday afternoon.
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The Carrollton Hawks matched up with the Okawville Rockets in the Class 1A Sectional Semifinals for the second season in a row.
Last season the Rockets ousted the Hawks 3-2 in eight innings.
This year Carrollton couldn’t take down Okawville again, losing 3-0.
“We played well,” Carrollton coach Greg Pohlman said. “We hit the ball right at them and when you play a good team like that, that’s what’s going to happen. I’m proud as ever with my boys, they played hard.”
Okawville (17-14-1) was spearheaded by their pitching ace, Brendan Killion, who went the distance by striking out 10 and walked nobody.
The Hawks, who were so explosive offensively all season long, could only muster two hits off of Killion, who has logged 16 innings in three appearances with 29 strikeouts and two earned runs thus far in the playoffs.
“We battled all game and came out on the wrong end,” Carrollton shortstop Alex Bowker said.
The Rockets, who finished second at state last season, play today at 1 P.M. against Valmeyer in the Sectional Championship.
“I wish them the best,” Pohlman said. “They have a good team.”
Sophomore pitcher, Kolten Bottom pitched a complete game, giving up three runs, one earned and allowed five hits.
He struck out six batters and walked no one.
Bottom finished the season with an 8-2 record.
“Kolten pitched one heck of a game,” Pohlman said.
He and Killion were sharp in the first inning, but then came the second, which proved the to be the most crucial.
Hayden Stringer led off with a Texas leaguer single, which was followed by a textbook bunt by Jeremy Watson down the first base line.
Killion tracked the ball down and proceeded to lob the ball over Drew Frederking’s outstretched glove into foul territory.
It was the only thing Killion did wrong the entire game.
Stringer advanced to third base and the Hawks were gifted a fabulous opportunity to get on the board first with runners on the corners and nobody out.
However, the catcher, Brad Fuhrhop had his pitcher’s back.
On a 1-2 count, Carrollton attempted a steal with Watson going for second in order for Stringer to steal home, Blake Struble swung and missed for the strike out, but Fuhrhop didn’t go for the bait at second.
Instead he rifled a bullet of a throw to third base and Colton Koepke applied the tag on Stringer for an unconventional strike em’ out throw em’ out.
“It’s just one of those things. We got a little lackadaisical and they got us out, but that’s what good teams do,” Pohlman said. “We just didn’t score when we had opportunities and that’s a big part of it.”
Killion then got out of the inning with another strike out.
Okawville led off with a long fly ball that was dropped in left field and then a single put runners on the corners with one out, which was followed by an RBI single to give the Rockets a 1-0 lead.
“Whoever made the fewest mistakes was going to win like in any other sport,” Pohlman said.
They made it 2-0 in the same inning on an RBI sacrifice bunt that scored a runner from third base.
In the bottom of the third, Josh Madrid laced an RBI triple to left center field to give Okawville a 3-0 lead, which turned out to be safe with the way Killion was pitching.
Carrollton, like most teams, found him to be very difficult as Killion retired 13 straight Hawks until Bowker hit a double off the wall in the sixth inning.
Nathan Walker then hit a line shot to third base, but Koepke was right where he needed to be and caught the ball with his glove inches from the ground, which summed up the Hawks tough luck when they hit the ball hard and the Rockets defensive awareness.
“That’s just baseball,” Pohlman said “I really had a great feeling when I came over here today. We’ve seen fast pitching like this before and we’ve hit it, but that’s just baseball.
Carrollton concludes one of their best seasons in school history with a 27-6 record and the remarkable thing is that they finished with two seniors and a majority of the roster is filled freshman and sophomores.
“When you have so many sophomores and freshman starting they think we’ll just have a rebuilding year,” Pohlman said. “We do rebuild but we reloaded and they gave it everything they had.”
The future certainty looks bright for Carrollton Hawks baseball.
“I think we’ll go further next year, hopefully,” Bowker said.
This was also the final game for coach Pohlman after 29 years of guiding the Hawks baseball program.
He is retiring with a record of 532-292.
