Prep Baseball Report

Final Wisconsin Power 25 Rankings


By Andrew Sroka
Staff Writer

Last week saw the climax of Wisconsin’s spring baseball season, featuring all four divisions crowning champions. Today, in our final edition of 2018’s Power 25, we’ll take a look at how the state playoff results impacted the top-25 teams in the state. For the first time all season, there’s a team not named Janesville Craig, Sun Prairie, or Arrowhead sitting at No. 1, and that’s because neither of those teams hoisted the Division-4 trophy on Thursday night.

Waunakee entered the state tournament ranked No. 11 on the Power 25. Their resume was strong, certainly, and they had a roster bursting with talent but they also had a couple notable losses on their record – one to Arrowhead and one to Craig. They eventually bypassed a couple other top tier Power 25 teams (Eau Claire North and Green Bay Preble) to find their way into the Thursday’s championship game, which they won. The D-1 title rocketed them up to the top overall spot on the board.

Below, we’ll examine the top-five teams on the final version of the Power 25, to close the book on another exciting WIAA baseball season.

+ Waunakee (21-6): The Warriors won their first-ever D-1 title on Thursday thanks in part to the slugging of Nate Stevens and the pitching of Derek Lee. Their performance in the state tournament was emphatic. They proved capable of winning in a multitude of ways, starting with their 12-8 win over Eau Claire North on Tuesday. They followed that up with a narrow extra-inning 3-1 victory over Green Bay Preble in the early evening, setting up a contest with Arrowhead for the D-1 championship. One Warrior who starred at the plate for Waunakee all week was Ben Nordloh. The left-handed slugger had five hits in the Warriors’ three tournament games and drove in five runs. Sophomore Taiten Manriquez is another one of Waunakee’s key contributors. The righty pitched eight inning on Tuesday in the State semifinal against Preble and held the Hornets to just one unearned run on four hits and a walk. He had a couple big hits throughout the three days, too, including the RBI base hit that un-tied the scoreless championship game in the fifth frame. They played all three phases of the game well this past week; they hit, pitched, and defended well and it carried them all the way to a State victory.

+ Arrowhead (25-4): It’s probably fair to say that no team had a tougher route to the State title game than the Warhawks. They belong to the Classic Eight Conference, so their regular season schedule is tough, featuring a number of variously ranked Preseason Power 25 teams like Catholic Memorial, Oconomowoc, Watertown, and Beaver Dam. And yet, the Warhawks came out on top of the storied conference. They entered postseason play as the state’s top-ranked team, by our measure, and had been either the No. 1 or No. 2 team since the start of May. Their deep run in the tournament – as far as a team can go without winning the whole thing – has them sliding into the No. 2 spot. Many of Arrowhead’s top players are seniors, like Jeff Holtz, Luke Dubnicka, Alex Tanke, Bryce Toussaint, and Chandler Pulvermacher, so the loss and runners-up label isn’t exactly how the Warhawks envisioned their final season ending. They did get to celebrate on their way there though, riding Zak Karrels’ electric walk-off homer against Craig in the semifinals.

+ Sun Prairie (25-4): Really, it was a shame that one of Arrowhead or Sun Prairie was going to be missing out on the trip to Appleton this season. The two teams had their paths cross in their shared Sectional and it was obviously the Warhawks who came out ahead in that heavyweight contest. On merit alone, the Cardinals probably warranted a place at State this past week. Sun Prairie spent more time as No. 1 on the Power 25 this spring than any other team, and they only dipped below No. 3 just once, briefly. They were a complete team and had the pitching to make a real dent in this year’s State playoffs if they had gotten past Arrowhead. They’ll miss graduates Taylor Jansen, Alex Oakley, Carson Holin, Ty Hamilton, and Luke DePrey, among others, but this is another prolific Wisconsin program, manned by head coach Rob Hamilton who will certainly be able to get the most of 2019’s squad, filling in the gaping holes from this year’s graduating class. The Cardinals finish the spring ranked as the No. 3 team in the state because, regardless of their early exit, they still defeated eight Power 25 teams this spring, including two eventual champs, Waunakee and D-2’s Waupun.

+ Janesville Craig (23-6): As far as next-level talent goes, the Craig Cougars might have been the team with the most Division-I commits on their roster at the tournament. Seniors Jacob Campbell (Illinois commit) and Noah Berghammer (Minnesota) as well as juniors Dan Blomgren (Michigan) and Mitchell Woelfle (Air Force) assembled one of Appleton’s most talented infields, if not the most talented. During the regular season, it was difficult to budge past Craig, Arrowhead, or Sun Prairie. The Cougars spent three weeks as the No. 1-ranked team on the Power 25 but were mostly No. 2 or 3. They won some big games and, like Sun Prairie, can say that they do own a win against Waunakee. But unlike their rival Cardinals, the Cougars also suffered some more notable defeats, including two to Middleton and a pair to Sun Prairie themselves. Still, they took Arrowhead to the wire on Tuesday’s late-night semifinal, ultimately falling to a walk-off homer, to cap an excellent season.

+ Waupun (25-2): The Division-2 title winners earn a hard-fought spot on our final edition of the Power 25 in 2018. The Warriors lost just twice this season, once in their first game of the season to St. Mary’s Springs, and the other in mid-May against a rolling Sun Prairie team. Apart from that, Waupun cruised through the postseason. Their toughest game may have come in the Sectional finals against Catholic Memorial when they pulled off a narrow 1-0 win thanks to the complete game, one-hit shutout from Caden Bronkhorst. It wasn’t the last time Bronkhorst hoisted this team onto his back. The junior righty also shut down Jefferson – a team that scored 14 runs the day before – in the championship to help the Warriors win the D-2 trophy. Many of the title run’s featured contributors, apart from Bronkhorst, are seniors, making this championship that much more special to this group. Brenden Bille, Jak Lenz, Caleb Sauer, and Bryce Burmania, among others, pulled their weight to capture a State title in their final season at the prep level.

OTHER NOTES

  • Webster (27-3) climbs all the way to No. 8 in the final Power 25 after capturing their school’s first-ever state title in their first season as Division-3 members. They’ll be the heavy favorites to repeat as champions in 2019, too, returning two of the state’s best arms to the top of their rotation: Jack Washburn and Hunter Rosenbaum.

  • Speaking of repeats, Athens (21-2) successfully defended their Division-4 title in 2018. The Fighting Bluejays overcame tragedy to get back to Appleton and they can call themselves back-to-back champs now.

  • St. Mary Catholic (18-3) earns a spot on the Power 25 for the first time all year after making it to the D-3 title game where they ultimately fell to Webster. It wouldn’t be a shock to see a rematch next year, considering both the Tigers and Zephyrs are returning the bulk of their talent back to the field in 2019.

CLICK HERE to view Wisconsin's final Power 25 rankings.

 

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