D4 Semifinals: Athens gets a shot at back-to-back titles; Thorp earns late comeback

The morning’s Division-4 semifinal games have been decided and we now know who’s headed to tomorrow morning’s D-4 championship game. Athens downed Ithaca in Wednesday’s first game and will be playing for a chance to repeat as D-4 champs tomorrow. As for Thorp, they earned a dramatic victory over Johnson Creek after taking a late, seventh-inning lead. Their title game berth is quite a recognition for a team playing in its program’s first-ever State tournament, too.

Thursday’s D-4 title game is slated to start at 9 a.m., right back at Neuroscience Group Field at Fox Cities Stadium.

Below you’ll find the game recaps for the two semifinal match-ups.

GAME ONE – Athens (20-2) vs. Ithaca (17-3)

Athens comes into the state final four as the top ranked D-4 team in Wisconsin, but would have their work cut out for them in the semifinals against Ithaca. Athens had to beat Ithaca’s ace Aaron Huebsch, who struck out 104 in 47 innings on the year.

Athens went into the sixth trailing 1-0 which looked like it may be enough for Huebsch, but the Fighting Blue Jays strung together a three-run rally that included four hits highlighted by a squeeze bunt from Connor Westfall that drove in the go ahead run.

Marshall Westfall and Seth Coker each finished with two hits. Athens moves on the the championship game tomorrow morning against Thorp, looking to defend their D-4 title.

GAME TWO – Thorp (14-10) vs. Johnson Creek (17-9)

Just when it looked like it was going to be an all-Bluejays D-4 title game, Thorp rallied back and took its first lead of the game in the top of the seventh inning and eventually sealed up the come-from-behind win, 6-5, over Johnson Creek.

Johnson Creek had a steady hold of the lead for most of the game, after they broke the game’s scoreless, hitless tie in the bottom of the third. They sent all nine batters to the plate in the bottom of the inning and scored four runs, two on Zach Johnson’s RBI single to left field. They actually scored all four of those runs after the first two batters in the inning recorded outs.

Thorp chipped away at the deficit right away, scoring two in the top of the fourth and two more to tie in the fifth, with the help of a few critical Bluejays errors in both frames.

But in the bottom of the fifth, Johnson drove home his third run of the day on a hard groundball that slipped through the left side to re-take the lead for Johnson Creek, 5-4.

And, again, Thorp was eager to climb back into this game – but patient enough to draw two walks to lead off the top of the seventh. Wyatt Denzine’s single drove in the tying run and brought the go-ahead run to third with no outs. In the following at-bat, Jakob Rosemeyer slugged a fly ball to left, plenty deep enough to bring home their go-ahead run and capture their first lead of the game in the process.

Lefty reliever Reece Drost took the mound again in the bottom of the inning and struck out the Bluejays in order to lock up the win and title game berth. The Cardinals will play in the championship game tomorrow morning against defending champs Athens, looking to complete a memorable first-ever State tournament run.

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