Spring – Ace Conner Phillips pitched a one-hitter, and centerfielder Carson Carpenter’s RBI single scored the winning run as Magnolia West defeat rival Tomball, 1-0 in game one of the best of three series in the Class 5A Region III Quarterfinals on Thursday evening at Grand Oaks High School.
The win sets up game two on Friday at 4:30 pm at Grand Oaks and gives the Mustangs (27-5) an opportunity to advance with a win.
Carpenter’s lazy run-scoring bloop single into shallow left field, just inside the third base line, ended a classic pitchers dual and broke up a scoreless game, with Ellwanger racing to home for the only run of the evening.
“We finally got a hit in the bottom of the sixth inning,” said Carpenter “We got the job done.”
The sixth inning began with Ellwanger getting aboard after Short Stop Kasen Handal fails to handle a bouncing grounder up the middle. An E-8 on the play. Oakes struck out the next batter but walked the next two.
After the error, Tomball’s Coach Douglass Rush made a trip to the mound and again after the first walk of the inning. Then Carpenter got a pitch he could handle, dropping an RBI single in front of diving left fielder Jake Johnson, who had covered a vast portion of the field to get near the ball.
“I told the kids to keep doing what we’ve been doing,” Magnolia West coach Justin Faltysek said.
Both Phillips and Eric Oakes had great stuff on the mound from start to finish. Up until the sixth inning, both held one-hitters. You knew someone would eventually be victorious but with the game tightly contested, it turned into a waiting game of mistake-free great baseball.
“Connor went out and pitched his tail off, says Mustangs center fielder Carpenter. “We played great defense.”
Nothing surprising about this matchup. Both teams knew it would boil down to pitching.
No 4 ranked Tomball (29-3-2) suffered its third loss of the season since dropping a 9-7 decision to Magnolia back on May 4th. The Cougars won district 20-5A with a 14-1 record.
Phillips recorded eight strikeouts, surrendered one hit and walked two. Oakes, an LSU signee took the loss, surrendering two hits, four strikeouts, and three walks.