Cougars bow out of Group III semifinals in eighth inning
By: Bob Nuse
ELIZABETH Where do you begin after a game like this?
Like it has been doing for the past two weeks in the state tournament, the Montgomery High baseball team showed it has plenty of talent and a boatload of heart.
After winning the North Jersey, Section 2 Group III championship by posting four straight impressive wins, the Cougars played a classic game in the state Group III semifinals on Tuesday at Williams Field in Elizabeth.
Montgomery fell behind, 8-1, after one inning. The Cougars then rallied to eventually take a 10-8 lead, only to see Ramapo scored five times in the sixth to go back up, 13-10. But as they have for the past two weeks, the Cougars showed they were not about to back down. They scored three times in the seventh to tie the game, then cut a runner down at the plate with the game tied in the bottom of the seventh before finally falling, 14-13, when Ramapo scored a run in the eighth.
"The effort and the heart were incredible," said Montgomery coach Peter Mueller, whose team finished the season with a 17-13 record. "Most teams would have folded right there after that first inning, packed it in and gotten 10-run ruled. But not these guys. I didn’t expect that from these guys. I expected us to play. And the other thing is, you’re down 8-1 and it is only the top of the second, so you’ve got a lot of game left.
"I told them not to try to get it all back at once. Let’s just chip away and make a game of it and they did that. I can’t be more proud of the guys."
Montgomery’s prospects seemed all the dimmer in that they were facing Ramapo ace Shooter Hunt, who entered the game with an 11-1 record and a 1.20 earned run average.
But Montgomery got a run back in the second when Alex Helfand singled to score Dale Hering, who had doubled. The Cougars then scored six runs in the third to knock out Hunt, with Nick Umar’s two-run triple getting the inning started. Helfand and Bryan Colombero also had run-scoring hits in the inning.
"(Hunt) is a very good pitcher and I don’t want to take anything away from him, but we’ve seen guys like this all season," Mueller said. "We’ve seen so many good pitchers this year that nothing fazes us any more. Our guys were very confident. We put one in the first, one in the second, you’re still down, 8-2, but these guys are up there saying we’re going to score runs. That’s what you want from an offense.
"I was very confident we were going to put runs on the board. Not to take anything away from their thrower, but the bottom line is we put up 17 against Mendham, an 11 spot against Red Bank, 10 against New Brunswick. Those are quality teams. I was very confident we’d put runs on the board. You get down 8-1 in the first inning and you know there is a lot of game left. This game is not over."
Meanwhile, David Blitzer came on and silenced the Ramapo bats with four innings of no-hit relief. By the time he took the mound in the sixth, the Cougars had taken a two-run lead when Mike Cahill scored on an error and Matt Conforti drove in a run.
"The guys who came in did a great job," Mueller said. "Blitzer held them down and let us get back in the game."
Ramapo’s bats came back to life in the sixth, scoring five runs and seemingly taking back the game. But this is a Montgomery team that has made a habit of scoring late in the game. In the seventh, Colombero singled in a pair of runs with two outs, and a pair of Ramapo errors allowed the tying run to score.
In the bottom of the seventh, it again looked like Ramapo might win the game, but James Boyer threw out a runner trying to score from second with a perfect throw from centerfield.
In the bottom of the eighth, Ramapo broke through with a run on a two-out shot to left that barely eluded the glove of Kevin Weingart, who nearly saved the game with a spectacular catch.
"It would have been a nice over-the-shoulder catch," Mueller said. "Nine out of 10 times he catches that ball. He’s the best outfielder we’ve ever had. Most guys don’t even come close to catching that ball. The ball carried on him. I don’t think anyone else even gets a glove on it."
So, while Montgomery wound up on the short end of the score, the Cougars showed the kind of team they have become over the past couple weeks, starting with a late rally to beat New Brunswick in their state tournament opener.
"It’s as satisfying as it gets without winning the overall state championship," Mueller said. "At one point this season we were pretty down and out. I don’t think the confidence was there. I guess all it took was the fifth and sixth innings against New Brunswick. That set us up for the rest of the year.
"We can play with anybody. That’s the bottom line. Ramapo was just a better team today. They scored one more run than we did."
But Montgomery showed plenty of heart, coming back against another top pitcher after getting down by seven runs early.
"It was not the way we wanted to start the game," said Umar, the Cougars’ captain. "But we came into the dugout and we felt like we’ve been in this spot before and we knew what to do to come back. We knew we needed to score a couple runs at a time and we’d be able to come back.
"We faced a lot of great pitchers this year and he’s a great pitcher too. But every batter on our team had confidence that they could do their part to get runs in. That’s baseball. Sometimes it goes your way and sometimes it doesn’t. It didn’t go our way today. But maybe another day, if we fought like we did today, we’d come out on top."
Most days they did, but not this time. Still, it was a great season for the Cougars, especially the last two weeks.
"The way the season ended was pretty good, except for today," Umar said. "We peaked at a good time of the season. We peaked right at the end in crunch time. The last couple weeks have been a lot of fun."