WNC Baseball: Wildcats Take Over Second Place With Sweep
Submitted by Jeff Munson on Mon, 04/15/2013 - 5:59pm
Any chance that Western Nevada College would suffer a letdown against Colorado Northwestern after a road sweep over defending Scenic West Athletic Conference champion Salt Lake was knocked out of the park. Instead, the Wildcats erupted for 46 runs and a weekend sweep.
AJ Hernandez hit two home runs, Conor Harber wore out opposing pitchers, and five Wildcats threw multiple scoreless innings Western extended its win streak to eight games.
The Wildcats took both games of Friday’s doubleheader from the Spartans, 13-3 and 9-3, then completed the four-game sweep with decisive 9-0 and 15-3 victories on Saturday in Rangely, Colo.
“It was another step in the right direction for our club,” said WNC Coach D.J. Whittemore. “Offensively, the guys did a great job of getting their pitch. The directive was don’t settle for a pitch you can hit but wait for a pitch you can hammer.
“We ran the bases extremely hard and exceptionally well.” he said. The pitching staff has been great for us the whole season, and they threw up a lot of goose eggs.”
Hernandez increased his team-leading home-run total to five with a grand slam and three-run homer.
“He’s taking a lot of balanced swings,” Whittemore said. “He provides a presence in the middle of our lineup. You have to throw strikes to get him out.”
Harber, who entered the series with a .378 batting average, hit the Spartans’ fence “about five times,” according to Whittemore. The freshman right fielder had three triples and two doubles in the four games.
“He’s putting together one of the best years that we’ve seen in the Scenic West Conference,” Whittemore said. “He’s having a monster year. He’s what they call a five-tool player … he’s very competitive, he makes adjustments quickly and he’s a tireless worker.”
Whittemore split up the pitching duties, giving his starters a break from working deep into games. Cody Hamlin, Phil Belding, Christian Stolo and Luke Eubank each earned a victory in the series. Hamlin leads the pitching staff with a 7-1 record, with Belding (6-1) and Stolo (5-2) close behind.
Hamlin worked three hitless and scoreless innings, while Stolo, Eubank, Austin Richmond and Tyler Bennett threw three frames of shutout ball. The four wins moved the Wildcats into second place at 17-11, only three games behind SWAC pace-setter College of Southern Nevada (18-6) with eight conference games remaining on WNC’s schedule.
But Whittemore said the standings are somewhat misleading.
“I don’t know how much stock you can put in the standings,” the eighth-year WNC coach said. “Salt Lake has their (last) series with Southern Nevada out of the way. It doesn’t mean anything until we get done playing Southern Nevada. I don’t see any perceptible difference between second, third and fourth place. It seems like a virtual tie.”
In any case, the Wildcats hold a one-game lead over third-place Salt Lake and a two-game edge over fourth-place College of Southern Idaho. First-place CSN holds a three-game lead over WNC.
WNC, 32-16 overall, is idle this week as it prepares for a pivotal four-game series with College of Southern Nevada at Morse Field on April 26-27 in Henderson.
“Our focus will be on getting better faster with great preparation,” Whittemore said. “We still have guys competing for spots in the starting lineup, even though we’re 48 games into the season. Our bullpen depth chart is still shaking out, so it’s a big week of practice and intrasquad games. Maybe next week we can look, if anything can be done, to catching them that weekend.”
