Baseball: Plainfield North blanks Plainfield East

Updated: April 26, 2012 8:07PM

This was a year when the rest of the Southwest Prairie Conference was planning to make life a little more difficult on three-time defending champion Plainfield North.

Someone forgot to tell the Tigers.

North received its third straight masterful pitching performance, this time from junior right-hander Cory Evak, and blanked Plainfield East 5-0 Thursday to sweep the three-game SPC series and maintain a level of comfort atop the standings.

On an afternoon with a stiff wind blowing in, Evak (6-0) allowed two hits, Matt Kramer’s fourth-inning single and Nick Sharrow’s sixth-inning double. He struck out five and walked four, but only one after the second inning.

“The first couple of innings were shaky, but I got things under control in the later innings,” Evak said. “The weather was hard on our hitters, but it was good for me.”

“He got out of the first couple of innings, and then he kept throwing strikes,” North coach John Darlington said. “He realized the weather was going to help him, and offensively we did enough.”

Kyle Bledsoe delivered the big hit for No. 3 North (21-1, 11-1), a two-run single in the fourth that increased the lead to 3-0.

“It was a tough hitting day for both teams,” East coach Adam O’Reel said. “You have to tip your cap to their pitchers. All three of them this series (senior Joe Cresta and junior Brendan Miller pitched the first two victories) threw very well.”

The Bengals (11-12, 5-6), meanwhile, received four-hit pitching from Mario Guzman and Joe Lewicki, but “four of their five runs were scored by guys who walked,” O’Reel noted. “Walks are a killer against a team like this. And they got a timely hit (from Bledsoe) and we didn’t.”

Bledsoe’s hit knocked out Guzman, normally a reliever but pressed into starting duty because Brandon Cymerman is battling shoulder tendinitis. “Mario did a good job stepping in,” O’Reel said.

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