EDWARDSVILLE – Edwardsville's baseball team bounced back from a tough loss to Belleville West on Tuesday with another excellent pitching performance from Andrew Frank and Andrew Yancik.
The Tigers took advantage of some opportunities and scored what proved to be the winning runs in the bottom of the fifth as EHS defeated Lockport Township of suburban Chicago 3-1 at Tom Pile Field Friday night in their opener of their own Tiger Classic round-robin tournament, taking their record to 17-4 on the year with games coming up today at 11 a.m. against Chatham Glenwood and at 1:30 p.m. against Highland.
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“I thought our pitching was really good,” said Tiger coach Tim Funkhouser. “Frank has really improved as the course of the season goes on; his breaking pitch and his fastball, he's been able to command them better and be a lot more consistent and show a lot of maturity on the mound.
“Then Andrew Yancik came in and was dynamite; those guys set the tone for us and in those situations where the other team needed to put a swing on one or get an at-bat, our pitchers made it tough on them. Conversely, on our end, we had a couple of bangers at the plate. One got thrown out on with two outs and the other one we slid under to add another run, so a couple of timely hits.
“That's kind of how our season started, but just getting a couple of big hits and making consistent plays.”
Frank started out the game by retiring the first 13 Porters he saw before a single up the middle from Nick Strysik broke up the perfect-game bid; Lockport eventually scored a run to tie the game; the Tigers had gotten a run in the first when Dylan Burris was hit by a pitch, stole second and third and came home on an error when the ball was thrown away when he was stealing third.
Yancik replaced Frank on the mound and shut down the Porters, giving up a hit himself and walking one.
EHS took the lead back in the fifth when Nathan Wallace, who caught for EHS, drew a one-out walk and was replaced by Blake Burris as a courtesy runner; Blake Burris came home when Jack Cooper delivered a double to center to put the Tigers back on top. Aaron Young was then inserted as a pinch-runner and was chased home when Dylan Burris singled. Yancik then went on to keep the Porter attack at bay thanks to some timely pitching.
Frank and Yancik teamed up for the two-hitter, Frank striking out six and Yancik fanning two. Joel Quirin went 1-for-2 with a double, Dylan Burris 1-for-2, Jack Cooper 1-for-2 with a double, RBI and run scored and Will Messer 1-for-2.
The night's opening game saw Highland score twice in the top of the seventh to defeat Chatham Glenwood 2-1; the Titans had scored in the bottom of the sixth before the Bulldogs scored what proved to be the game winners.
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