Cranford, Scotch Plains to Face Off in UCT Semifinals

Cool, calm and collected. That's exactly what you have to be when you find yourself trailing 5-0 in one of the biggest games of the season.

The Cranford boys' varsity baseball team chipped away one run at a time, and took advantage of timely hitting and a self-destructing Roselle Catholic defense to grab a hard-earned 7-5 victory over the visiting Lions in the quarterfinal round of the Union County Tournament at Memorial Field.

The comeback began in the bottom of the second inning, when the red-hot Rob Ghiretti singled home the first run. With two out in the third, junior Greg Matlosz came through with a big two-run single, part of his three-RBI day, cutting the lead to 5-3. He also added an RBI single in the fifth.

Ghiretti, who went 2-for-3 in the game, followed with the key two-run double to cap the comeback and give the Cougars a 7-5 lead.

"We just had to work hard and take it one run at a time," Ghiretti said. "Once we got it to three, I was pretty confident. I figured we'd be able to get two or three more. It's important. It shows that anything can happen, that we shouldn't look past a team."

"We were down 5-0, it's not where we wanted to be," said head coach Dennis McCaffery, in his 12th year at the helm. "Give credit to our kids, we took the approach one inning at a time, we battled throughout the whole game and we were fortunate to get some timely hitting and were very fortunate to get the win today."

It was another big pitching performance from lefty senior Nick Cook, who tossed four 2/3 innings of shutout ball to improve his record to 4-1. Cook had the fans on the edge of their seats when Roselle Catholic loaded the bases in the 7th inning, but a game-ending double-play, the Cougars' third of the game, saved the day, and moved the Cougars into a semifinal showdown with second-seeded Scotch Plains on Saturday.

"I was trying to overthrow, I was trying to blow it by the guys," said Cook. "I realized I can't do that.  I'm not the fastest thrower on the team. I just had to bear down and get them out. This was really important, I just can't explain it. Every out is important. Every pitch."

Last week's Cranford Patch Athlete of the Week, Mark Osofsky, came through in the clutch once again, hammering a pair of doubles to help the cause.

"It just shows that even when we're down, we can still hit and play defense and come back and get a really big victory," said Osofsky. "The coaches always talk about never getting down and never getting off-guard. We tried to get one or two every inning and eventually come back and have one big inning and take the lead."

The third-seeded Cougars improved to 15-3 on the season and will next host Union Catholic today at Memorial Field.

"It means a lot to me," Cook said. "I just want to go as far as I can in the county and states, hopefully we'll win both of them. I want to have a good season."

"It means a lot to us," Osofsky said. "Obviously, we want to win the entire tournament, it's just the beginning. If we play well (Saturday), hopefully we can play another good game in the finals."

"Before we even address the semifinals, we have two more games, Thursday and Friday," said McCaffery. "Obviously, it's what you want to do. The county tournament is a four-round tournament, We take it one round at a time. But we have two very important conference games that we have to work on. Then after Friday's game, we'll address Scotch Plains."

Cranford owns a two-game lead in the conference standings heading into Thursday's showdown with Union Catholic. The Cougars last won the county crown in 2007.