»RELATED: Saturday’s high school scoreboard
»RELATED: Saturday’s high school roundup
After games against Tecumseh (9-6 overall, 3-6 CBC) on Monday and Tuesday, Kenton Ridge plays Mad River division leader Benjamin Logan (14-3, 9-1 CBC) on Thursday.
“We’ve won three (division titles) in a row a few times but never four,” KR coach Aaron Shaffer said. “There’s no pressure on them. I think they’re excited they have the opportunity to do it.”
On Saturday, Kenton Ridge held off a Russia rally to win 12-6. The Raiders, who reached the Division IV state title game last season, trailed 7-1 before scoring five runs in the bottom of the sixth. KR answered with five runs in the top of the seventh for the 12-6 final.
KR split the season series with Jonathan Alder (ranked No. 9 in the Division II state poll) with a 5-4 win on April 18th and an 8-6 loss two days later. KR lost to Tippecanoe (ranked No. 1 in D-II) 3-1 on April 21st. And on April 25th, KR beat Springboro (ranked No. 8 in D-I) 6-3.
“That’s what you want to do toward the end of the year. You want to play the best competition you can to get ready for the tournament,” Shaffer said. “We’re trying to get them into that tournament attitude now. … There’s no room for error. It’s going to be tough.”
Senior Quinton Roach leads KR with a .500 batting average, 25 runs scored and 18 stolen bases. Senior Bailey Armentrout has a team and CBC-leading 23 runs batted in and is hitting .368. Junior Garrett Kelly (.347, 13 RBI), sophomore Calvin Dibert (.342, 12 RBI) and senior Drew Wichael (.333) have also paced the offense that is hitting .315 as a team.
“We’ve got a lot of guys doing good things,” Shaffer said. “The last couple of games we’ve struggled to put seven innings together. Sometimes you look up (on the scoreboard) and that one inning got us. We have to be better than that. We can’t afford to give up big innings like that.”
Dibert (5-0, 1.77 ERA) and Wichael (2-1, 2.14 ERA) lead the pitching staff. Dibert has 31 strikeouts in 27.2 innings pitched and Wichael has 18 strikeouts in 19.2 innings. Junior Matt Tateman (2-1, 3.50), junior Luke Haerr (2-0, 4.82) and junior Chris Lyle (1-1, 4.67) have also pitched quality innings.
“Our pitching has been solid. We’ve been solid on the mound and for the most part we’ve played really good defense,” Shaffer said. “When you pitch well and you’re around the plate and you play really good defense you’re going to give yourself a chance to win games. The last couple of games we’ve kind of struggled with that. If we pitch to contact and play good defense we’re going to be tough to beat.”
On Sunday, Kenton Ridge was voted the No. 1 seed in the Division II sectional tournament at Kenton Ridge. KR plays the winner of No. 5 Urbana and No. 6 Graham on May 10th. Urbana and Graham play on May 8th.
The seven-team sectional includes an all-CBC field that also includes No. 2 Ben Logan, No. 3 Northwestern, No. 4 Shawnee and No. 7 Bellefontaine.
“Basically the rest of the way are must-win games. It’s getting into that tournament mode,” Shaffer said. “We control our own destiny (in the CBC) and that’s all we can ask for.”
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