PLYMOUTH – Riley’s Wildcats had Plymouth on the ropes in the Plymouth sectional semi final, but the Pilgrims threw the punches when in counted coming back from a 3-0 deficit to plate two in the sixth and seventh for a very unusual 4-2 win.

“A lot of it has to do with who’s on the mound,” said Plymouth head coach Ryan Wolfe. “Of their eight games he’s (Sam Morand) won five of them. I knew coming in we were going to see a pitcher who changed speeds and moved it around and he did that.”

Morand was masterful for five innings a single by Dyllon Pavey was the only Plymouth hit and a first inning hit batter – Cam Dennie – were the only two base runners until the sixth. That was when the Pilgrims figured some things out.

“Their pitcher did a great job and we had a talk there with our kids in the sixth inning,” said Wolfe. “When a guy doesn’t throw real hard you have to think of it like wiffle ball in the back yard just stay back and hit the ball over the second basemen’s head. When we got guys on we got his pitch count up and started getting a little wild. We hung in there.”

An error free, nearly perfect game for Riley fell apart in the sixth with two outs when Benji Nixon punched a single to left Dennie single him to third and then Jeremy Drudge singled him home. With runners at the corners Noah Pesak’s routine grounder was misplayed and Dennie came across with the second run to make it 3-2.

In the seventh Pavey started the damage with a lead off single, Cole Filson then sacrificed courtesy runner Colten Schuler to second. Nate Nixon beat out an infield hit to put runners at the corners. Luva hit a routine ground ball to second and second baseman Nic Jerue made a decision to try to cut off Schuler at the plate. His throw was far too late and everybody was safe with the score tied.

Benji Nixon reached on another infield error to load the bases and Morand walked Dennie to plate the game winning run.

“We started pressing a little bit there later in the game but our pitchers gave us a chance to win and made big pitches when it counts, we had some good defensive plays behind them,” said Wolfe. “When you go through our lineup our guys make pretty good adjustments and they did that late in the game. We got a couple free bases and some missed plays and we took advantage of it.”

*Plymouth 4, Riley 3

Riley 0 0 1  1  1 0  0  3-10-3

Plymouth  0 0 0  0 0 2  2  4-6-1

WP – Jesus Luva. LP – Sam Morand. 2B – Zack Meert (R).