Baseball: Mount Carmel tops Brother Rice in 8 innings
Updated: April 23, 2012 9:09PM
Despite going hitless in his first three at-bats Monday against a resilient Brother Rice squad, the confidence of Mount Carmel’s Tyler Laurisch never wavered.
With the score knotted at 6, Laurisch took the batter’s box in the bottom of the eighth with one out and a runner on second. He calmly ripped a single up the middle of the infield, sending Brent Novosel home with the winning run and his teammates into a postgame celebration.
“I know I tried to do to much with (my at-bats) the first few times up. I just wanted to hit it hard up the middle,” Laurisch said. “ As soon as I saw coach (Brian) Hurry send (Novosel), I got really excited.”
With the 7-6 win, top-ranked Mount Carmel concluded a two-game sweep of its Catholic League rival, and more impressive, upped its record to a gaudy 22-0 overall and 8-0 in league play.
It was a sterling team performance from Mount Carmel, which battled back from a deficit three different times. Sam Kint and Dan Pappas belted first and second inning homers, respectively, and shortstop Jerry Houston (4-for-5) made a dazzling stop up the middle in the eighth inning to save a run.
Left-hander Jeremy Kravetz gave up four runs in the first inning, but allowed just five hits and two runs over the next seven frames to earn the complete-game win.
Brother Rice (14-8, 5-3), suffered its third loss in as many days going up against top competition. The Crusaders lost to Mount Carmel 7-4 on Saturday and Joliet Catholic 3-2 on Sunday.
“It was a great game, very fun to watch. We came up on the short end today, but hopefully, we’ll get those later on in the season,” Brother Rice coach John McCarthy said.
The Crusaders got hits from eight different players Monday. Dan Roche (2 RBI), Patrick Kirwin and Redic Richardson all had RBI doubles for Brother Rice.
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