Oran makes most of change

Oran's baseball team was not originally scheduled to play in the Oak Ridge Tournament.

But after a team pulled out of Oran's tournament and a slot opened up in the Oak Ridge tournament, the Eagles were in.

On Saturday, Oran (8-2) put its appearance to good use, beating St. Vincent 12-5 to win the championship at Oak Ridge High School.

"My main goal out there this weekend was to get some young pitchers in there," Oran coach Mitch Wood said.

Keeping with that goal, Wood threw sophomore Paul Bucher in Saturday's final. Bucher pitched 4 2/3 innings for the win, striking out six while allowing eight hits and three earned runs. Senior Matt Seyer came in to close out the final 2 1/3 innings to preserve the win.

Besides watching some of his young pitchers log some quality innings, Wood saw a hitting clinic from his team. Oran scored 30 runs in its three tournament games, and pounded out 33 hits. Oran had 13 hits apiece in its two games on Saturday.

"We really hit the ball well against some decent pitching," Wood said. "I thought we did a really good job staying with the ball."

The Eagles' offense was quiet through three innings of the championship game before exploding in the fourth. Oran had five hits and seven runs in the fourth, with eight of the first nine batters reaching safely in the inning.

Trevor Irwin, Garrett Roslen, Craig Friga and Austin Dumey had two hits apiece to lead Oran. Roslen, Joey Williams and Matt Seyer each drove in two runs. Roslen had five hits on the day, and Irwin and Seyer had four.

Wood said for such an inexperienced lineup, with only Roslen and Seyer returning regulars, he is really excited about the way his team is hitting.

"We've been hitting the ball a lot better than I thought we would," he said.

St. Vincent briefly led at 1-0, but after playing six games in six days, the Indians' pitching simply was spread too thin. Justin Ruessler pitched five innings and allowed 11 runs.

"We ran out of pitching," St. Vincent coach Craig Hayden said.

Alex Armbruster and Joey Guilliams had two hits apiece for St. Vincent, which fell to 6-4 with the loss.

"We've been inconsistent," Hayden said. "One game we play well, and another game we don't. When we execute on offense and defense we'll be an excellent ball team."

In the third-place game Leopold scored twice in the third to defeat Woodland 2-1. All three runs were unearned. A.J. Seiler picked up the win, and Michael Vandeven was on base three times for Leopold (4-6).

After Vandeven was hit by a pitch in the third and Matt Stoverink doubled, an error scored both runs for the Bobcats. Josh Foster had two hits for Woodland.

jjoffray@semissourian.com

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