Tri-West baseball came into Crawfordsville with little fear of the No. 4 ranked Crawfordsville Athenians on Tuesday as the two teams met in a Sagamore Conference battle. The Athenians hit the ball hard all night but unfortunately it was right at most of the Bruin defenders. Trailing 4-2 in the seventh Cville looked to even up the game when Wyatt Motz led off with a double followed by a single from AJ Hall. Motz scored to make it 4-3 on a sac fly from Cale Coursey, but a base-running error cost CHS a runner at third base when Mason McCarty was thrown out at third. Tri-West held on for an SAC upset over the Athenians and secured a 4-3 win.
The game didn’t start out well for CHS as ace pitcher Cale Coursey struggled out of the gate with a lead-off single and three straight walks. An Athenian error allowed the first five Bruins to reach base and Crawfordsville found themselves playing from behind all game.
“We definitely put the ball in play well all night,” Crawfordsville coach Brett Motz said. “We just got behind early and that seemed to just a bind on things. Tri-West did a great job playing defense when we did put it in play so you have to give them credit.”
Crawfordsville scattered eight hits in the loss and out-hit the Bruins (6-2 3-0 SAC) 8-4 however the issues were that CHS was never able to string enough hits together.
The final line score for Coursey on the mound wasn’t something that most would call bad as the senior ace threw five innings and only allowed two hits. Two of his three runs were earned and he struck out six Bruins, but did walk four. While Motz isn’t worried about his ace, he does note how in his last two starts including on Tuesday how he hasn’t been able to get off to a good start.
“He’s walking and hitting guys especially early on and that’s not like him,” Motz said. “He has to come in and make sure that he’s focused to begin games and really attack hitters. We know that his stuff is good enough and he has to understand that as well and trust it.”
Coursey did have three of the four runs batted in for Crawfordsville (9-3, 2-1 SAC) in the loss. Motz led the way with two hits, Hall, Jude Coursey, Bryce Dowell, Kale Wemer, and Dylan Farley all had one hit each for CHS.
The Athenians will get a chance at redemption on Wednesday when they travel to Lizton looking for a split.
“Every game we play from here on out we’re going to do our best to win, because the margin for error is slim,” Motz said. “Tomorrow is no exception to that. We just hope we can get back on track and be able to learn something especially from this game. We’ll use to continue to grow as we hope to play our best at the end of the season.”
