Catcher David Vilches sparked a huge rally for the Jays with a home run late (Spomer / WBR) CLICK TO BUY
With six outs remaining and Seton Hall holding onto a four-run lead a 58-minute lightning delay gave top-seeded Creighton enough time to regroup and spark a comeback that ended in a 10-9 win over the fourth-seeded Pirates in the opening game of the 2019 Big East Tournament at Prasco Park.
After junior left-hander Ryan Connolly retired the first hitter in the top of the eighth inning a lightning strike halted action for 58 minutes on Thursday afternoon. Once play resumed, junior right-hander Mitch Boyer finished what Connolly started to send the Bluejays to the bottom of the eighth trailing 8-4. Sophomore catcher David Vilches and junior left fielder Parker Upton each homered in the bottom half to ignite the comeback, and an inning later freshman designated hitter Jared Wegner tied it up with a base hit, then came around to score the winning run six pitches later to send the Bluejays to Friday night’s winner’s bracket game.
“We caught a break, I’ll be honest with you,” Creighton head coach Ed Servais said. “That lightning delay helped us. It took some of the momentum away from them. We knew we had six outs and we used them pretty well.
“I give our guys credit for hanging in there. Usually when a team is as locked in as Seton Hall was it’s hard to handle them, but this is a veteran team. They know it’s a nine-inning game for a reason. The game isn’t decided in the fourth or fifth inning, it’s a nine-inning game. That was a big win today.”
Ryan Connolly kept the Jays in it after Mitch Ragan had a frustrating day (Spomer / WBR) CLICK TO BUY
Prior to the late-inning drama, Seton Hall appeared to be a step ahead of the Jays at every turn. Sophomore right fielder Jerry Huntzinger laced a double down the left field line on the first pitch of the game to kick off a frustrating afternoon for Creighton’s ace Mitch Ragan. Four pitches later, the senior right-hander was late covering first base on a chopper off the bat of Seton Hall junior center fielder Tyler Shedler-McAvoy. While Ragan was preoccupied with the play at first, Huntzinger took an aggressive turn around third and kept the foot on the gas as he slid home ahead of the reigning Big East Pitcher of the Year’s throw back to the plate to give the Pirates a 1-0 lead.
Creighton returned fire in the bottom of the first with an RBI triple off the wall in center field by Upton followed by a high chopper to shortstop by junior first baseman Jake Holton to take a 2-1 lead after one. After Seton Hall tagged Ragan for three more runs in the top of the second, the Bluejays countered again with a game-tying, two-run single through the right side of the infield by junior second baseman Isaac Collins, but that momentum was short-lived as the Pirates moved back in front with a run in the top of the fourth and a two-run home run by junior first baseman Matt Toke to make it 7-4 in the fifth.
Ragan gave up another extra-base hit two pitches after Toke left the yard and that was the end of his afternoon. The 10 hits and seven earned runs that Seton Hall tagged him with over his four and a third innings on the mound were the most he has allowed in either category in any of his 29 career starts at Creighton.
“He didn’t have anything today,” Servais said. “His fastball was not anywhere near where it normally is. He was getting everything elevated, and [Seton Hall] went in with a plan. They realized that Mitch doesn’t walk a lot of guys, and they jumped on the first thing they saw that was straight. They saw him four weeks ago and he only gave up two hits, so I give Seton Hall a ton of credit. They were ready to go.”
After Seton Hall tacked on a run in the top of the sixth to extend the lead to 8-4, Creighton tried to put a rally together in the bottom of the seventh. Upton doubled to lead things off, then advanced to third on a wild pitch before Holton drew a four-pitch walk to put runners on the corners with nobody out and the heart of the order due up. But Seton Hall brought in left-hander Blake Espinal and he proceeded to retire the next three hitters in order on eight pitches.
The lightning came two batters later and the teams cleared the field for what ended up being a 58-minute delay under partly sunny skies. Seton Hall opted to stick with their lefty reliever when Creighton came to bat in the bottom of the seventh, a decision that backfired almost immediately as Espinal gave up a solo home run to Vilches on a no-doubter over the center field wall and followed it up with a five-pitch walk to Wegner.
“That was an interesting decision, to be honest,” Servais said. [Espinal] was elevating the ball a little bit, and the wind had picked up. When we came back after the front moved through the wind was blowing out even harder, then Dave gets one up, Parker gets one up, and it’s game on.”
Now nursing an 8-5 lead, Seton Hall replaced Espinal with right-hander Ryan McLinskey. The Seton Hall sophomore struck out center fielder Will Hanafan on four pitches, then got Collins to pop out to third for the second out.
That brought Parker Upton to the plate.
Parker Upton did what he needed with his own home run blast late in the game (Spomer / WBR) CLICK TO BUY
Thirty-three days prior, a then-injured Upton hit a pinch-hit, ninth-inning solo home run off McLinskey to help the Bluejays finish off a three-game sweep of the Pirates. He needed five pitches to leave the yard that day, but on Thursday, he only needed two. This time there was a runner on base and it drew his team to within a run at 8-7 heading to the final inning.
An error and a wild pitch helped Seton Hall turn a lead-off double into an insurance run to extend the lead to 9-7 as the heart of the order came to bat for Creighton in the bottom of the ninth, and unlike in the bottom of the seventh, the 4-5-6 hitters in CU’s lineup came through. It started with a lead-off double by junior right fielder Will Robertson followed by a four-pitch walk by senior shortstop Jack Strunc.
With tying runs now on base, McLinskey ended a seven-pitch at-bat by senior third baseman Jordan Hovey with a strikeout for out number one before handing the ball off to sophomore right-hander Hunter Waldis.
Waldis got David Vilches to pop up to short, but then uncorked a wild pitch to move both Robertson and Strunc into scoring position. That brought Jared Wegner to the plate, and the freshman from Kearney, Nebraska delivered the biggest hit of his college career when he lined a 2-1 pitch from Waldis back up the middle for a game-tying, two-out, two-run single.
“That was as good of an at-bat as we’ve had all year,” Servais said of the clutch hitting by the first-year Bluejay. “To ask a freshman to do that against a guy with a low arm slot — and Jared has not been swinging the bat as well as he did earlier in the year — I just can’t say enough about it.”
The game-tying knock wasn’t the end of Wegner’s heroics. He got such a good jump off the pitcher that he stole second base without a throw to move into scoring position. After fouling off a 2-2 pitch from Waldis, Will Hanafan sent a high chopper to the edge of the infield grass that might have sent the game into extra innings, but Matt Toke appeared to lose sight of the ball just long enough for it to drop out of his glove, ricochet off his knee, and roll away to … nobody.
Hanafan was easily safe at first and Wegner scored without a play at the plate to end the game. The only players on the field who might have run faster than Hanafan and Wegner on the play were the teammates of theirs who sprinted out of the dugout to celebrate the wild, walk-off win.
The comeback helped Creighton improve to 36-11 on the season and keep alive their slim hopes of hosting a regional at TD Ameritrade Park. That’s the last thing on the mind of their head coach, however. He just wants to see if his team can play with fire a little less frequently and get off to a better start, and sustain it, on Friday night.
“I want to see us play for nine innings with the same emotion that we had the last two innings [against Seton Hall],” Servais said. “I want to see us play with a little sense of urgency. If we can do that we are a tough draw.
“We continue to play into the game a little too much. We kind of wait for the other team to throw the first punch and then we react. That’s a dangerous formula at this time of year. That’s eventually going to catch up with you, so I want to see us get off to a better start and let it go. It looked like we were a little tight early … we just need to let it go. There is no sense in being tight at this time of year. Just let it go.”
Day two of the Big East Tournament will get underway at Prasco Park at 1:30 p.m. with an elimination game between the fourth-seeded Pirates and second-seeded Xavier, who dropped a 2-0 decision to St. John’s in the nightcap on Thursday. The Bluejays will face the Red Storm following the conclusion of Seton Hall-Xavier. First pitch for that winner’s bracket showdown is tentatively scheduled for 5:30 p.m.