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From the: Prince George Citizen
Bears hitters hibernating

One-run loss to St. Thomas puts local team on the ropes

by JASON PETERS Citizen staff
The Prince George Black Bears have now lost three games in a row. One more, and their hopes of claiming the title at the Canadian senior men’s fastpitch championship will be dead.

Friday night at Spruce City Stadium, the Black Bears lost their opening game of playoffs 2-1 to the St. Thomas Evergreen Centennials. As he did during St. Thomas’s 3-0 Wednesday night round-robin victory against the Bears, Centennials pitcher Frank Cox dominated on the rubber. Cox, who has already been named the most valuable player at nationals, allowed just three Prince George hits. And, the only one that did any damage was an Evan Potskin solo home run in the top of the fourth inning.

“Frank did a great job on us, but we’re starting to get to him,” said Black Bears coach Dave Koch.

“We are getting on him. He’s a world-class pitcher — (a) 2-1 (score), and the best game probably of the tournament. We had our chances.”

The Centennials, the defending champions, scored the only two runs they needed in the bottom of the first inning. With one out, Tyler Lessard drew a walk from Prince George pitcher Korrey Gareau and then stole second base. After Tim Macumber struck out, Rob O’Brien smacked an RBI double down the first baseline. The next batter, Steve Mullaley, drove in Macumber with a single to centre field.

With two runs on the board for their team, Cox and his catcher, Sean O’Brien, went to work.

“I was just trying to keep the ball low and hit the spots Sean was calling,” said Cox, a member of Team Canada. “It’s a small park here and it carries pretty well. It doesn’t take much to get it out, so I was just trying to do my job to get them to hit it at my guys. It seemed to work out pretty good. One got away on us, but it wasn’t enough.

“It was pretty much the same game plan (as Wednesday night),” Cox added. “We know most of these guys and they know me too. But, if I throw my pitches, it’s a lot easier for us to get outs. Evan hit a nice pitch. It was in a good spot and everything, but he was looking for a certain pitch in a certain spot and he got it and drove it over the wall.”

Potskin got a drop ball on the outside part of the plate and took it the opposite way over the right field fence.

In their past three games, which included a 4-1 Thursday afternoon loss to the Jarvis Merchants to end round-robin play, the Bears have scored just two runs. The recent lack of production doesn’t concern Potskin.

“We’ve got a good hitting team here,” he said. “Cox is just a really good pitcher and we’ve got to figure out a way to get more hits off him.”

During Cox’s three-hitter, he struck out five batters. Gareau, meanwhile, surrendered five hits and struck out five.

In their next game of their double knockout playoff round, at 1:30 p.m. today, the Bears will play the winner of a Stony Plain-Newfoundland matchup that will be on the field at 9:30 a.m. today. Stony Plain ended the round robin with a 3-4 record and Newfoundland was 0-7.

“We’ve got to come out and play hard,” Potskin said. “It doesn’t matter who you’re playing — everybody deserves to be here and everybody is good. We’ve got to play hard and do our best.”

Koch said changes in the Prince George batting order are likely.

“We’ve got some guys who were swinging hot at the beginning (of the tournament), they’ve cooled off a little bit,” he said. “We’ll just adjust where they’re batting in the lineup and see where that takes us.”

Today at 6 p.m., St. Thomas will continue its quest for another Canadian title when it faces the Jarvis Merchants, 4-1 winners Friday over the Saskatoon Aspen Interior Black Sox. A victory there would put the Cents into the tournament final Sunday at 1:30 p.m.

“We’ll take it as it goes and hopefully come out with another good effort (tonight),” Cox said.

This entry was posted on Saturday, September 2nd, 2006 at 8:06 am and is filed under Canada, Tournaments. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.