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MASCOUTAH - Baseball is full of highs and lows.
This past Monday, the Marquette Catholic Explorers took down the previously undefeated Gibault Catholic Hawks in a gritty 3-1 victory. The win saw head coach Tim Fahnestock notch his 100th career victory at Marquette.
Two days later they met the vaunted Mascoutah Indians.
“It was fun. It was a good game too,” Fahnestock said. “I was very happy because not a lot of people knew about it, so you know it was kind of low key. I was happy with that day and then to come back today, and you’re like geez it’s highs and lows. That’s high school baseball.”
The Indians were ruthless at the plate and on the mound while they took advantage of some fielding mistakes by the Explorers in a 12-1 defeat which lasted five innings in a non-conference game on Wednesday at Mascoutah High School.
Marquette falls to 7-4.
“It was tough because when you follow up a game like Gibault who were a good team, we just didn’t show up today,” Fahnestock said. “[Mascoutah] hit the ball top-to-bottom. [They’re] a quality team. We didn’t show up today. We had ground balls that we couldn’t take advantage of, and we had about six, seven errors, so that’s the key right there, but they were a very good team. I’m not knocking them at all. They hit the ball, but we made mistakes.”
While Monday served as Marquette’s high point in the early season, that was Mascoutah’s low point. They got shutout 5-0 by Belleville West and were ticked off about that.
“We played West on Monday, and we didn’t hit the ball worth a lick,” Mascoutah coach Don Eddy said. “We talked after the game and again yesterday about how we needed to play better and especially have better at-bats and better intensity. We’re trying to teach them to show up and play hard and play well consistently each. We did a much better job today.”
Jack Owens was lights out as he threw a complete game shutout. He was perfect through the first three innings and struck out seven batters while walking none and gave up one run on two hits. He picked up the win and is now 4-0 this season.
“Jack did a good job, and he’s done a good job all season for us,” Eddy said. “He fills up the strike zone. He throws several off-speed pitches for strikes and able to locate. He did a very good job today.”
Sam Scott and Cole Gober each collected two hits and two RBI. Owens and leadoff hitter, Logan Jung each went 2-for-3 with an RBI apiece.
The Indians scored four runs in the first inning off Marquette’s Riley Siener on five consecutive base hits. Jung scored on an RBI double by Scott and Gober followed with an RBI single scoring Logan Bibb. After a single by Owens, Jeff Getchell drove in Gober, and Ryan Norwood singled home Maguire Meunier, who finished the game with three runs scored.
Mascoutah tallied three more runs in the bottom of the second courtesty of two errors by the Explorers and another RBI by Scott.
After allowing one run in the third, sophomore Logan Dennis came on in relief of Siener, who momentarily stopped the bleeding.
Garrett Weiner, who came into the game batting .517, ended Owens’ perfect game with a double down the third base line. He would score Marquette’s only run when Mascoutah took too long to locate a wild pitch and crossed home plate from second base.
In the bottom half of the inning, the Indians tallied four more runs off Dennis giving them an 11-run lead, which was enough to end the game early in the top of the fifth inning.
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