Prep Baseball: RCW falls to Adrian in 3A
GRANITE FALLS -- Renville County West scored five runs in the top of the seventh but it was too little to catch up with Adrian in the Section 3A winner's bracket final on Monday at Richter Field.
The Dragons escaped with an 8-5 win. They'll have two chances to win one game in Thursday's championship.
Renville County West will play Murray County Central, which eliminated Canby 10-6 last night, today at 5 p.m. at Marshall's Legion Field.
Adrian led 2-0 after one on Adam Dieckman's two-run homer to straight away center off Jaguars' starter Ben Trochlil.
The Dragons got five more runs in the fourth inning, benefitting from four consecutive errors by the Renville County West infield.
There were only two hits in the frame, a two-run double by the Dragons' No. 9 hitter Ross Wieneke, and another two-run double by Brett Nowotny off reliever Steve Jakel.
The Jaguars had managed only Trochlil's fifth-inning single through six innings off Dieckman. Dakota Frieborg, who had flied out to the right-center wall in the first, sharply singled to lead off the seventh. Dieckman than issued back-to-back walks to Nathan Wensauer and Brett Feldman to load the bases with no outs.
Trochlil's single to left brought in the Jaguars' first run of the game. The second run scored on a wild pitch and then Ryan Fransen doubled in two more. Trent Novotny singled in the fifth run which got Freiborg, the team's most dangerous hitter, to the on-deck circle. But Dieckman reared back to get his 13th strikeout and send the underdog Jaguars' to the loser's bracket.
Earlier RCW had upset defending state and section champion MACCRAY, which cleared the way for Adrian's title run after finishing runner-up a year ago.
Adrian 8, RCW 5
RCW (12-8) 000 000 5 -- 5 5 4
Adrian (22-2) 200 501 x -- 8 5 0
HITTING - Renville County West: Trent Novotny 1-for-4, rbi; Dakota Freiborg 1-for-3, Ben Trochlil 2-for-3, rbi; Ryan Fransen 1-for-3, 2b, 2 rbi ... Adrian: Brett Nowotny 2-for-3, 2b, 3 rbi; Adam Diekmann 1-for-4, 2-run HR, 2 rbi; Mitch Sieve 1-for-3, 2b, 2 runs; Ross Wieneke 1-fort-3, 2b, 2 rbi
PITCHING (ip-h-r-er-bb-so) -- Renville County West: Ben Trochlil (L) 31/3-2-7-2-1-2, Steve Jakel 22/3-3-1-1-0-3 ... Adrian: Adam Dieckman (W) 7-5-5-5-3-13
