1A Baseball: Marquette slips past Newark 2-1 for 9th straight regional title

OTTAWA — Entering Saturday’s Class 1A Marquette Regional championship game, the combined earned-run average of Newark freshman starting pitcher Eastin McBroom and Marquette junior starter Alec Novotney was eye-popping 0.31.

It figured to be a tight, low-scoring contest.

The Crusaders were able to score single runs in the fifth and sixth innings, then held off a seventh-inning, two-out uprising by the Norsemen to capture a ninth straight title and 12th in the past 15 seasons with a 2-1 triumph at Masinelli Field.

Marquette (30-3) advances to the Harvest Christian Academy Sectional semifinal at 6:30 p.m. Wednesday at Judson University against Elgin St. Edward, which topped host Westminster Christian 7-3 in their regional final.

Newark ends the season 13-22.

“We hit some missiles early on, but they were right at them and missed a couple of opportunities to score in the opening couple of innings,” said Marquette coach Todd Hopkins, his squad stranding six runners on base in the opening four innings, five in scoring position. “The guys did a good job of staying with it and put together some pretty good at-bats today.”

Marquette broke the scoreless deadlock in the bottom of the fifth when Novotney smacked a one-out, two-strike triple to left and scored on an infield single by Sam Mitre.

“I was just trying to see-ball, hit-ball in that situation and got a fastball right down the middle,” Novotney said. “It felt good off the bat.”

Grant Dose reached first on a leadoff error in the sixth, stole second and moved to third on a sacrifice bunt by pinch hitter Braxton Nelle.

“That play was huge,” Hopkins said of the bunt. “I told Braxton before that inning that if Grant got on, he was coming in to bunt. He did a great job of coming off the bench and getting it down, but he had showed us a couple weeks ago he could do it in a tight spot.”

Sophomore lefty Caden Durdan followed with a two-strike, opposite-field base hit to score Dose and make it 2-0.

“Grant got on, Braxton did a great job of bunting the runner to third and all I was thinking about was just putting the ball in play somewhere,” Durdan said. “Down 0-2 in the count, I was looking for an outside pitch and that’s exactly where the pitch was. It was exciting to be able to come through in that spot.”

In the Newark seventh, Novotney struck out the first two batters, but then plunked McBroom before a pair of infield miscues allowed a run to score.

However, Novotney — who allowed just one hit, walked one and fanned 12 in the complete-game victory — was able to strike out the final batter to end the game with potential tying run on second.

“To be honest I didn’t have my best stuff today and I wasn’t getting ahead in the count as much as I would have liked,” Novotney said. “My curveball was good but not great and I missed way too many of my spots. It was just one of days where I had to dig deep and compete.”

Novotney, Mitre and Durdan each had two hits for Marquette.

McBroom went 5⅓ allowing eight hits, one earned run with one walk and four strikeouts with Kiptyn Bleuer coming on to record the last two outs of the sixth.

“We gave ourselves a chance to tie it up in the seventh. The guys just kept battling,” Newark coach Josh Cooper said. “That’s a heck of a good team over there (motioning toward the Marquette postgame huddle) and we were right there with them. I knew with this group today we were either going to come away with a win or go down fighting. I couldn’t prouder of this team.

“Eastin gave us everything he had today, solid outing on the mound, got our only hit and took a hit by pitch with two outs in the seventh to keep the inning going.

“All the guys gave it everything they had.”