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GEORGETOWN, DEL. —
Sussex Central baseball head coach Todd Brock preaches to his Golden Knights that there are four crucial elements in winning a baseball game.
Tuesday night with heavily favored rival Sussex Tech in town to take on the Knights, it was the first time Brock saw his squad do all four in one game and the result was a 3-1 upset victory.
“Pitching, defense, hitting and base running, if we do all four of those things well we will win,” Brock said of the upset. “Today is the first time we have done them all, [and] up until now we were lucky if we did two of them well in a game.”
Central struck first in the contest, as it scored a pair of runs in its opening at bat by way of a passed ball and senior Matt Cleary’s RBI groundout. Those two runs were enough for Cleary, who went the distance in the contest from the hill and also knocked in an insurance run with a sacrifice fly in the third.
Cleary’s only jam during the four-hit, four-strikeout performance came in the sixth inning when Tech was trailing by two and had runners on the corners with one out. The Central ace was able to get Tech’s Shane Marvel to go down on strikes and then got out of the inning when Eric Sharff grounded out in the following at bat.
“I wasn’t concerned, but I didn’t want to give them any runs,” Cleary said of the sixth inning jam. “All I had to do was make the right pitches to get out of it, who was at the plate didn’t matter.”
The win was Central’s second in a row over a difficult conference opponent and kept gave the Knights a little light as they look to get back on track for a playoff berth after starting the season 2-5.
“Hopefully we’ll use this as a momentum builder,” Brock said of the win. “It’s easy to get up for a game against Tech, a rival who beat us twice last year. What’s important is we play every game like we did today, because our backs are already to the wall.”
Sussex Central baseball head coach Todd Brock preaches to his Golden Knights that there are four crucial elements in winning a baseball game.
Tuesday night with heavily favored rival Sussex Tech in town to take on the Knights, it was the first time Brock saw his squad do all four in one game and the result was a 3-1 upset victory.
“Pitching, defense, hitting and base running, if we do all four of those things well we will win,” Brock said of the upset. “Today is the first time we have done them all, [and] up until now we were lucky if we did two of them well in a game.”
Central struck first in the contest, as it scored a pair of runs in its opening at bat by way of a passed ball and senior Matt Cleary’s RBI groundout. Those two runs were enough for Cleary, who went the distance in the contest from the hill and also knocked in an insurance run with a sacrifice fly in the third.
Cleary’s only jam during the four-hit, four-strikeout performance came in the sixth inning when Tech was trailing by two and had runners on the corners with one out. The Central ace was able to get Tech’s Shane Marvel to go down on strikes and then got out of the inning when Eric Sharff grounded out in the following at bat.
“I wasn’t concerned, but I didn’t want to give them any runs,” Cleary said of the sixth inning jam. “All I had to do was make the right pitches to get out of it, who was at the plate didn’t matter.”
The win was Central’s second in a row over a difficult conference opponent and kept gave the Knights a little light as they look to get back on track for a playoff berth after starting the season 2-5.
“Hopefully we’ll use this as a momentum builder,” Brock said of the win. “It’s easy to get up for a game against Tech, a rival who beat us twice last year. What’s important is we play every game like we did today, because our backs are already to the wall.”
