Tribune/Kyle Mills
Lee’s Chris Warters lifts his helmet in celebration after hitting a two-run homer in the seventh inning off Lewis-Clark State reliever Matt Stabelfeld. That made it 5-2 Flames, a score that would stand up in Game 15 of the Series Tuesday night.
Lee sidetracks Warriors’ push for third straight NAIA
crown, prevailing 5-2 on strength of combined five-hitter
By JIM BROWITT
of the Tribune
The pace was monotonous, almost drowsy, but it had to be a temporary thing. Teams like Lee and Lewis-Clark State don’t offensively dawdle, and certainly not for nine innings.
Yet the rhythm of Game 15, an NAIA World Series contest frequently though somewhat inaccurately referred to as the winners-bracket semifinal, never picked up speed. The scoring bursts that did interrupt an unusually tranquil evening at Harris Field were few in number and small in volume.
And they mostly came from Lee.
The top-seeded Flames enjoyed the advantage in an unanticipated pitchers’ duel, beating third-seeded L-C 5-2 in Tuesday’s pairing of the tournament’s last unbeaten teams.
Dallas Sims and Pablo Lopez combined on a five-hitter, holding the Warriors to their lowest offensive Series totals in three years.
And while the Flames amassed 11 hits, the real difference in this game, viewed by a crowd of 4,390, boiled down to two swings - Brian Bistagne’s two-run double in the fifth inning and Chris Warter’s two-run homer in the seventh.
“We pitched all right, certainly well enough to win, but we did next to nothing at the plate,” said L-C coach Ed Cheff, whose team hadn’t been this offensively ineffective in the Series since a 5-0 loss to Embry-Riddle in 2005. “Those first four innings, we were just nonexistent.”
And aside from Brian Ward, who had three hits, the Warriors weren’t notably better afterward.
L-C, which picked up runs in the fifth and sixth innings via RBI singles by Nic Benton and Josh Ashenbrenner, respectively, mustered only one hit - Ward’s second double - over the final three innings. Lopez worked that stretch, three days after a complete-game effort against Bellevue, striking out three while pocketing his 12th save.
“There’s nothing but good teams left, so we knew we’d have to play a great game and get a super game from our pitchers,” Lee coach Mark Brew said. “Those guys (Sims and Lopez) were outstanding.”
Their counterparts, Ryan Woods and Matt Stabelfeld, were comparably efficient. Woods struck out seven over a six-inning start and yielded eight hits, but only one of them - Bistagne’s two-out double that bad-hopped L-C third baseman Kyle Greene - was harmful.
And Stabelfeld surrendered three hits while striking out five. But two of the hits came in succession after a blister prompted Woods’ removal, including Walters’ first-pitch home run to straight-away center field.
L-C, which saw a 12-game Series win streak snapped, drops to 55-7 and into a win-or-else situation. The Warriors will face a familiar foe today at 3 p.m. - Spring Arbor, the team that finished second to them in last year’s tournament. L-C will need to win three consecutive games to claim their third straight national championship and 16th overall.
For Lee, 62-8, the route to a title is much more direct. The Flames face Oklahoma City tonight at 7 and, with a win, would move into the title round. A loss would put them there as well, as long as L-C beats Spring Arbor. But a combination of Lee and L-C losses would require a preliminary rematch with Oklahoma City.
Either way, the Flames like their position.
“We’ve done well to get ourselves to this point, but we always look at it as a pitch-by-pitch thing,” Brew said. “This was a great win for the program, but look what it gets us - now we’ve got Oklahoma City.”
