Jameson Sadowske finished the longest outing of his career victorious. It was his second appearance of five innings or more in the postseason. Photo by Ryan Coleman, d3photography.com

By Pat Coleman
D3sports.com

GRAND CHUTE, Wis. – With two unbeaten teams, a ton of subplots and a berth in the Pool B championship game on the line, the winner’s bracket game between UW-La Crosse and Emory started out as a classic and ended as a masterpiece as the Eagles of La Crosse walked off with a 3-2 win in 12 innings.

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With two teams nicknamed the Eagles coming in for the last game of the day, one could have expected we were in for a high-flying affair. Instead, UW-La Crosse pitcher Joe Miller and his Emory counterpart, Connor Dillman, embarked on a pitchers’ duel that Jameson Sadowske brought to a resounding conclusion with six scoreless innings of relief to get the win in front of an announced crowd of 2,544.

Sadowske’s team picked him up at the end of the longest outing of his career, as UW-La Crosse first baseman Shane Adler reached was hit by pitch with two outs, stole second and came around to score on an infield grounder that was thrown away for the final margin.

Adler got the green light from UW-La Crosse coach Chris Schwarz to steal off Emory submariner Michael Byman. And after that, he got another aggressive baserunning call, getting waved around when Emory third baseman Philip Maldari picked up Travis Buxton-Verstegen’s infield grounder. Maldari threw it away and Adler came in with the winning run.

“I saw (third base coach Scott Gillitzer) waving home. I just put my head down and kept trucking,” Adler said after the game. “I wasn’t stopping for anything. If he would have bobbled it, he probably would have thrown me out by about 50 feet, but it didn’t matter. I was going no matter what. I was going to make them make a play.”

“Phil makes that play and we’re playing again,” said Emory coach Mike Twardoski. “It’s not the play that lost the game for us. We needed to come up with some key hits. But we faced two great pitchers today.”

Schwarz saw a need to take any opportunity that presented itself, even if that slim chance was a two-out hit by pitch: “We had to do something. With the pitching that was going on on both sides I didn’t really think anyone’s going to string together five or six hits to score some runs.”

In fact, La Crosse was held to just six hits in the final 11 innings of the ballgame. After a couple of errors by left fielder Wilson Morgan helped La Crosse (35-13) scored two first-inning runs, Connor Dillman settled down and gave Emory (31-14) eight and a third innings of seven-hit ball, allowing just the two runs.

Dillman, the D3baseball.com South Region Rookie of the Year in 2012, was easily having the worst year of his career, entering the day with a 7-4 mark and a 3.93 ERA. “One thing about Connor is he’s been hurt all year,” Twardoski said. “A warrior, the hardest worker on the team, and this kid gave us one of the best performances of the year. All he does is ask for the ball.”

“I’m usually OK with giving up singles,” Dillman said. “When some things happened that were out of my control in the first inning I didn’t really try to change anything, just kept throwing strikes. When I can do that, it usually takes care of itself.”

Morgan committed the two errors to help extend the first inning, but he atoned for them, coming up with a game-tying single in the top of the seventh inning off of Sadowske.

After Joe Miller had started the game with six shutout innings, Dylan Eisner and pinch-hitter Brian Hernandez started the seventh off with back-to-back singles and Miller’s night was done. Although the runners moved up on a wild pitch, Sadowske struck out No. 9 hitter Chris Young and leadoff man David Coble and was one strike away from getting Morgan as well. But Sadowske left a ball out in the middle of the plate and Morgan rapped it into right-center field to score both runs and tie the game at 2-2.

This slide into the bag at second base was ruled to be interference, possibly a makeup call from the top half of the inning. Photo by Ryan Coleman, d3photography.com

Sadowske came back to retire the side in order in the eighth and ninth and got out of the 10th when Maldori hit into an inning-ending double play.

Controversial and incorrect calls kept the 11th inning scoreless as well. Wes Peacock beat out an infield grounder after a wide throw pulled the UW-La Crosse first baseman off the bag. Replays clearly showed Peacock beat Adler’s dive to the base with the glove hand, but Peacock was called out by first base umpire Ron Brown.

Second base umpire Rick Force answered in the bottom half of the inning, calling out batter Justin Anderson after Force judged Taylor Kohlwey’s slide into second to be interference. That resulted in an inning-ending double play instead of runners on the corners and two out.

Dillman went all the way into the ninth before giving way to Emory closer Kyle Monk. The reliever, working for the second consecutive night, was able to strand Joel Zyhowski at third after he had reached with a single to open the bottom of the ninth.

Emory got only one runner as far as third base in the first six innings off of Miller as Peacock reached on a two-out fielder’s choice, stole second and went to third on a passed ball, but Miller struck out Dylan Eisner to end the threat. The South Regional champs also stranded a runner at second base in the third, fifth and sixth innings. Emory left 11 runners on base and UW-La Crosse 14 for the game.

Sadowske got the win to improve to 5-0, while Byman lost for the first time in two decisions, giving up the unearned run in the 12th.

“Somebody was going to break,” said Schwarz. “Somebody was going to make a mistake. I believed that we were not going to make the mistake.”