Ryan Murken

Your Prep Sports

WEST BRANCH – The easy thing for Trey Eagle to do after getting roughed up for 10 runs in the first two innings of Tuesday’s doubleheader opener against Tipton was to hang his head and start thinking about game two.

Instead the West Branch senior picked his team up and helped the Bears pull off an improbable comeback in game one.

Eagle had two hits including a home run as the Bears scored 13 unanswered runs to rally from a 10-0 deficit for a 13-10 win over Tipton in West Branch.

“Lots of teams down 10-0 probably think ‘lets get to game two,’” Eagle said. “We know we are never out of a game.”

After digging itself a 10-0 hole after two innings on Tuesday the Bears scored the next 20 runs, and were leading the nightcap 7-0 in the third inning when play was suspended due to lightning.

West Branch moved to 13-6 with the win in the opener and is now 11-4 in River Valley Conference play while Tipton dropped to 10-12 and 7-9 with the loss.

“We’ve scored nine runs in an inning before so we know that we can put runs up fast and that’s our mindset and I don’t think it really ever changed throughout the game,” Eagle said. “We had hit the ball hard early in the game and we knew they would start falling and eventually they did.”

Tipton hammered nine hits and scored 10 runs in the first two innings off of Eagle who entered with a 3-0 record and a sub-2.00 ERA.  

“They hit the ball hard, that was one of our best pitchers and he was throwing the ball over the plate and hitting his spots and they were hitting the ball,” West Branch coach Andy Lapel said. “Kudos to them for really tagging the ball the first couple of innings.”

Trailing 10-0 Eagle jump started the comeback with a double to leadoff the West Branch second inning and later scored on a Brad Hunger RBI single.

That was just the start for West Branch.

The Bears got back into the game with a six-run third inning in which the first six batters had hits.

Eagle had a two-run home run in the third inning that cut the lead to 10-5 and Brady Lukavsky had a two-out, two-run single that cut the lead to 10-7.

“I told them every time they came in we aren’t out of it, you guys have to believe and keep yourselves mentally focused and just chip away,” Lapel said. “We thought our bats would come alive and they did.”

West Branch cut the lead to 10-9 in the fourth on a two-run double by Hunger.

The Bears pulled even at 10-10 in the sixth when senior Mitchell Knoop laced a two-out, RBI double to left field that scored Pete Espensen.

“A lot of times this year we’ve put up five, six or eight runs in an inning,” Knoop said. “We have a lot of people that can hit the ball so we know we are in every game.

Two batters later West Branch took its first lead on a pinch-hit three-run home run by sophomore Kaleb Sexton.

“We have confidence in him and that’s why he got the at bat,” Eagle said of Sexton. “To put one over the fence in that situation that is as clutch as it gets.”

Sexton had struck out in his only varsity at bat before Tuesday’s pinch hitting appearance.

“We knew that it was probably going to come down to getting a pinch hitter in and I guess I made the right decision,” Lapel said. “You lose a lot of those calls but you win one sometimes and it paid off for us.”

Sophomore Bryce Pickett tossed four innings of shutout relief to earn the win and Ted Bridges worked a scoreless seventh to earn his third save of the season.

Pickett and Bridges combined to allow four hits and one walk in five innings of scoreless relief.

“We were thankful that Bryce Pickett came in and pitched well,” Lapel said. “He’s a sophomore and he hasn’t gotten a ton of time but we know when he comes in he is going to throw heavy strikes, he has a lot of movement on the ball and we knew he would keep us in and he did. He did a great job.”

Hunger had three hits and drove in three runs to lead a 14-hit West Branch attack.

Eagle and Knoop each had two hits and drove in two runs as nine of the Bears’ 14 hits went for extra-bases.  

Eagle, Hunger and Espensen had all homered in the nightcap before the teams were pulled off the field in the third inning due to lightning.

“We’ve worked hard at hitting and it’s paying off,” Knoop said. “We had four home runs last year and I think we have 16 or 17 this year.”

Game 1

Tipton                         460  000  0  –  10  13  5

West Branch              016  204  x  –  13  13  4

W – Bryce Pickett                   L – Trent Pelzer          SV – Ted Bridges

2B – WB: Trey Eagle, Pete Espensen, Brad Hunger, Mitchell Knoop (2), Tanner Lukavsky, Matt Paulsen. TIP: Dylan Mente, Trent Pelzer, Connor Hermiston

HR – WB: Trey Eagle, Kaleb Sexton  

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