By: Bob Nuse
Close games are becoming habit forming for the baseball teams from Princeton and Montgomery Highs.
In the case of Princeton, that has meant three straight narrow wins. For Montgomery, it’s meant a couple of tough-luck losses.
Princeton won its third straight close game Saturday afternoon, topping McCorristin, 6-4, in an opening round game of the Mercer County Tournament. The win came less than 24 hours after the Little Tigers had held on for a 9-8 win over Montgomery under the lights on Friday.
The loss was the second straight for the Cougars, who have had six of their first 10 games decided by one run during a 5-5 start.
For Princeton, the wins are a sign of a team beginning to turn the corner.
"I think the whole team is starting to feel more comfortable, and we’re playing much better baseball than we were at the start of the season," said Princeton coach Greg Short, whose team upped its record to 5-7 with a thrilling, 5-4 win over Notre Dame Wednesday. The Tigers will face Ewing in the MCT quarterfinals on Saturday at 2:30 p.m. at Mercer County Community College.
"We’ve become a lot more aggressive as a team. I like us to stay aggressive, even when we get a lead early in the game."
The Little Tigers got off to a 1-6 start, which included a two-run loss to Nottingham and a one-run loss to West Windsor-Plainsboro South. They began to turn the corner with a 10-8 win over WW-P North, then posted the wins over Montgomery and McCorristin before the loss to the Raiders.
"We’ve been able to pull out some close games and I think it has helped us get some momentum going," said Princeton senior Stuart Abram, who helped produce the game-winning run against Montgomery with a bunt single and a stolen base in the seventh inning. "We started the season a little slow, but we’ve been coming together and we’ve got a lot of guys that can contribute."
That was the case on Friday against Montgomery. Kevin Peterson started on the mound and gave the Little Tigers five solid innings, then Alex Sugiera came on to pitch the last two innings and earn the win. Things got a little tense in the bottom of the seventh when a pair of hit batters and a bunt single loaded the bases with no one out. But Sugiera retired the middle of the Cougar lineup without allowing a run to score to earn the win.
"Alex really came through for us," said Abram, who had a pair of hits in the win on Friday and two more on Saturday. "We’ve all been picking up each other the last few games. We had some close games at the beginning of the year that we didn’t win. But now we’re playing with a lot more confidence."
The Little Tigers are hoping that confidence carries over to some more wins.
"The team is playing more like I thought we could play," Short said. "We’ve got a lot of games coming up. Hopefully we can do some good things in the county tournament and play well enough to get back to .500 and make it to the state tournament."
The win over Montgomerys continued Princeton’s mastery over the Cougars. While Montgomery has traditionally finished the season with a better record than the Little Tigers, the Cougars have not been able to find a way to beat Princeton.
"This is seven or eight years in a row that they’ve beaten us," said coach Pete Mueller, whose team will open play in the Somerset County Tournament on Saturday when it hosts Watchung Hills at 2 p.m. "We never beat them while Zoran (Milich) was here. And they beat us again this year. They’re always a tough team. They’ve got some quality players and they always seem to play well against us."
