OIA Baseball
No. 1 Campbell needs nine innings to fight off Kaiser, 3-2


  



Thu, May 1, 2014 @ [ 3:30 pm ]


FINAL 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 89 R H E
Kaiser 0 02000000245
Campbell 0 0 0002001360

W: Ian Kahaloa    L: Kamalu Vincent-Simeona

CAMP: Zachary Recolan 2-3 run 2 rbi HR; Ian Kahaloa 9.0 IP 2 ER 16 K
KAIS: Aaron Oda 1-3 2 rbi; Kamalu Vincent-Simeona 8.0 IP 1 ER 5 K


'EWA BEACH - Campbell did not see many fastballs from Kaiser, but made the most of the few that it saw.

Dorrien Villanueva-Hermosura's double off a fastball to the left-center alley with one out in the bottom of the ninth inning scored Keola Himan from first and lifted the host Sabers over the Cougars, 3-2, Thursday in a quarterfinal of the O'ahu Interscholastic Association Red baseball tournament.

Campbell (12-1), first in the ScoringLive/OC 1 Power Rankings, will play No. 10 Roosevelt (9-4) in one semifinal, 6:30 p.m. Friday at Hans L'Orange Park. It will be televised on OC 16. Mililani and Kailua will play in the first semifinal at 3:30 p.m. The four semifinalists have clinched Division I state tournament berths.

The No. 9 Cougars (9-5), who had a seven-game win streak snapped, will play Leilehua (7-7) in a fifth-place bracket game on Friday at Howard Oda Baseball Field at Wahiawa District Park. Winners of the fifth-place semifinals also will clinch state berths.

Kaiser, which scored double-digit runs in its previous four games, managed only two against Campbell starting pitcher Ian Kahaloa (5-0), who went the distance, allowing four hits and two walks with season-high 16 strikeouts. Three of the hits came in Kaiser's two-run third inning on Aaron Oda's flare single to center. Kahaloa threw 135 pitches.

"Ian's a gamer," Campbell coach Rory Pico said.

Kahaloa, who relied on his low-90 mph fastball and slider, retired 19 of the last 21 batters he faced after allowing the two-run single.

"I just couldn't quit," Kahaloa said. "I knew we had it. I just kept on pitching."

Sophomore right-hander Kamalu Simeona was brilliant in eight-plus innings, tantalizing the Campbell hitters with off-speed pitches. He allowed three runs (one earned), five hits and six walks with five strikeouts. He threw 131 pitches.

"We threw a lot of curveballs because that was the way we could get them out," Kaiser coach Mark Rasmussen said. "I was just hoping for one more run and then we'd bring in Kelan (Yoshioka).

"That guy (Kahaloa) was awesome. It's not easy to hit that kind of guy when you don't see him every day. At the end, he was throwing even harder and better."

The Cougars held a 2-0 lead until two out in the bottom of the sixth when No. 9 hitter Zachary Recolan drilled a high fastball to center for a two-run home run to tie the game at 2. It was the team's first homer of the season.

"That was clutch," Pico said. "That was just big-time. He's been taking great swings at practice. I know we bat him ninth, but there's a reason we have him there. He's done the job for us, turning the bottom over to the top."

Kahaloa was able to hold off the Cougars through nine innings before his team pulled it out in the home ninth.

Dewayne Sprinkel led off with Simeona's sixth walk of the game. Rasmussen then brought second baseman Shawn Miyashiro from second base to switch positions with Simeona. Himan reached first when his bunt back to the pitcher was turned into a force out at second. Then the left-handed hitting Hermosura roped a 2-0 fastball from Miyashiro to the opposite alley, easily scoring Himan with the winning run.

"I was just looking for a pitch to drive in the runner or just get a base hit, move him over, at least," Villanueva-Hermosura said. "I made an adjustment at the plate and just went away with it."

It was the first fastball over the plate he had seen in his five plate appearances. Simeona got him to pop to short, fly to center and strikeout. With first base open in the seventh, Simeona intentionally walked Hermosura.

"Dorrien struggled all day," Pico said. "They pitched him well. He kind of changed his approach. He looked for what he was looking for and put a good swing on it."

Kahaloa, a junior right-hander, retired the first seven batters he faced until DH Elima Haole reached on a bunt single to third. Haole was running on the first pitch to Simeona, who grounded it snide the right-field foul line for a single to put runners at the corners with one out.

After Kelan Yoshioka struck out, Simeona stole second with Michael Austin at the plate. Austin walked to load the bases. On a 1-1 pitch, Oda got jammed and hit a flare to center that fell between the center fielder and shortstop for a two-run single. After that hit, Kahaloa retired the next eight in a row before allowing a sixth-inning walk to Oda.

"He's our ace pitcher," Villanueva-Hermosura said of Kahaloa. "The defense backed him up here and there and we just believed in him."

Simeona could not say the same for his defense, which committed five errors, which meant extra pitches for him. He had thrown 77 pitches through five innings during which time three batters reached on errors. He began laboring with command from the seventh. He had issued four of his six walks from that point on, but escaped a bases-loaded one out jam in the seventh with an inning-ending double play. He worked out of first and second with one out in the eighth when catcher Yoshioka picked off a runner from second. Simeona got out of the inning when he got Jobe Ibana on a soft grounder to first.

"Yeah, we gave up a lot of extra outs, which extended him more," Rasmussen said.

One of the errors was costly. Kila Kapihe led off by reaching first on an error. Simeona, battling Kahaloa batter-for-batter, struck out the No. 7 and No. 8 hitters. Recolan came up and worked a 3-2 count after six pitches. The seventh was a high fastball that he drilled to the softball diamond opposite the baseball field.

"No. 9 guy and we wanted him to put the ball in play," Rasmussen said. "I thought about throwing a curve, but I'm not going to second guess. He hadn't hit the ball all day, so we just wanted him to put the ball in play. Ended up hitting it right where we weren't, so that's how it goes. I think he actually swung at ball four."

Recolan, who had struck out and reached on a chop single to second in his previous at-bats, said the pitch was on the borderline of ball or strike. Though Simeona was using mostly off-speed, Recolan noticed the pitcher was starting to lose command.

"In a way, yeah (I was surprised at the fastball)," Recolan said, "but he was having trouble controlling (the off-speed). He threw three straight pitcher balls. If he had thrown strikes more (with the off-speed), I think he would've thrown something else."

The Sabers had a golden opportunity to end the game in regulation in the bottom of the seventh. Sprinkel led off with a walk and took second on Himan's sacrifice. Hermosura was intentionally walked before Tryzen Rene Patricio reached on an error to load the bases. But Kapihe hit Simeona's first offering to second baseman Miyashiro, who touched second base and fired to first for the inning-ending double play.

While the errors hurt the Cougars as far as Simeona needing to use more pitches, he was able to work out of jams because of the Sabers failure to execute bunts and losing runners on base.

"The problem was we didn't execute our offensive game plan, the bunting, base running," Pico said."We didn't drive guys in with runners in scoring position."




Reach Stacy Kaneshiro at [email protected].




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