In a span of about 24 hours, the Northview baseball team made some major strides in the early stages of the Northern Lakes League Buckeye Division race.
Northview, ranked ninth in the latest Division I state coaches poll, completed an impressive two-game sweep of visiting Perrysburg on Tuesday with a 6-1 victory.
Eleven league games remain for the Wildcats (8-0, 3-0 NLL).
On Monday, Northview had taken an 11-1, five-inning mercy-rule win at Perrysburg, which dropped to 7-4, 2-3 after Tuesday's loss.
In the NLL’s preseason Buckeye Division coaches poll, the top three ranked teams, in order, were defending champion Anthony Wayne, Perrysburg, and Northview.
“That's a top echelon team in our league, and anytime you can beat Perrysburg twice in a season, that was a successful little series here,” second-year Northview head coach Aaron Tullis said. “Coach [Perrysburg's Dave] Hall is an all-time winner, and a legend that we take a lot of our stuff from.
“I'm proud of our guys for having a little grit and digging in and playing our style of baseball.”
In this second matchup, the Wildcats got a solid pitching effort from hard-throwing 6-foot-3, 190-pound senior right-hander Vin Bentley, who will play at the University of Toledo next year.
Bentley (3-0 record) threw a complete-game four-hitter, which was one elusive out from being a shutout. His effort kept 2022 D-I state champion Northview perfect on the young season.
“Vin is as good as we've ever had here,” Tullis said of his current ace. “He follows in a long line of aces behind Garrett Zimmermann and Blake Bradford [1-2 punch from 2022 state championship team], and all the way back to Mike Moyer.
“Vin does a good job of just getting the ball and going. He doesn't overthink it, doesn't make it complicated, and he's the ultimate competitor.”
Bentley struck out just three Perrysburg batters, but he deftly survived six errors by his defense, which despite that he credited for the win.
“I couldn't do it without my teammates,” Bentley said. “My No. 1 goal is to throw strikes, and [Perrysburg] put the ball in play. My teammates backed me up, I had a few Ks, and that was all she wrote.
“This was huge. [Monday] we put it on them, and today was another great win. It puts us in a really good spot. We're rolling right now. Every at bat, people are up, and it's really great.”
After yielding a lead-off single to Yellow Jackets catcher Quinn Weber in the top of the seventh, Bentley got Landon Winters on a fielder's-choice groundout, and then he fanned Trent Bezek for the second out.
Two infield errors and a hit batsman forced in Perrysburg's lone run of the game. Bentley got Abram Hire on a force play to seal the win.
Northview took a 3-0 lead in the bottom of the second, when Yellow Jackets starting pitcher Parker Faris walked two batters before yielding back-to-back singles to Preston Gehring and Josh Sprenger to bring the first run home.
Faris nearly escaped further damage with consecutive strikeouts, but Connor Draper followed with a two-run double down the third-base line.
The Wildcats added an unearned run in the third, with Charlie Paulson (2-for-3) getting a lead-off single and scoring from second on a two-out throwing error.
Northview made it 6-0 in the fourth, when Carson Holmes and Colin Tomanski began the inning with singles. Holmes later scored on a Faris balk, and Paulson followed with an RBI single.
Faris allowed seven hits in his four innings, and he struck out seven Wildcat batters.
“We've got to stick together, we've got to get better, and we've got to play better in tight situations,” Hall said of his postgame message to his Jackets. “They got bases loaded and got base hits. We got guys on base and rolled the ball over.
“The last two days, we just walked too many people, and you've got to hit the ball better than what we did.”
First Published April 17, 2024, 1:21 a.m.
