Sports
Avondale Overcomes Late Rally by Troy to Win District Semifinal Game
The Colts come up one run short in Avondale's 3-2 win on Saturday afternoon in playoffs.
For the Troy Colts, it was almost the perfect ending. Almost.
Troy went into the bottom of the seventh inning against Avondale in the district semifinals on Saturday afternoon at down 3-0.
The wheels almost came off for Avondale after two fielding errors and a past ball helped the Colts score two runs and put the go-ahead run on second base.
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With Troy’s top hitter Nick Guitar coming up to the plate, coach Jim Ellis thought his team could be on the verge of something special.
“He’s been our best hitter, he’s going to Ohio Northern next year, who else do you want at the plate at that moment, at that time?” Ellis said. “I couldn’t draw it up any better. To have the past ball to get the winning run on second, things were lining up nice for us.”
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Guitar needed to get a hit against Avondale’s ace A.J. Susick, a pitcher who the Colts have faced three times this season.
“I thought we put the bat on the ball pretty good today against him,” Ellis said.
And Guitar nearly did some major damage on a pitch that Susick left over the plate. Guitar drove a fly ball to leftfield to end the game. If he didn’t get so far under the baseball, the out could’ve easily been a double.
“We didn’t get the timely hitting we needed,” Ellis said.
The loss spoiled a solid day’s work from starter Michael Thomas.
“We got a wonderful pitching performance from Michael,” Ellis said. “Today, his approach was great.”
He pitched a complete game, gave up six hits and walked two. He struck out five batters and only one of Avondale’s runs was earned.
The Yellow Jackets went up 1-0 in fourth inning when Craig Zimmerman hit a triple to knock in a run. He also had a sacrifice fly in the sixth inning for an RBI. Dylan Ahern bunted a run across in the sixth as well.
Ellis was disappointed his team’s season ended, but not they way they played.
“I thought our effort was very good, we struggled the last few weeks, the attitude and effort today was great, we had a lot of energy,” he said.
