Published: April 23, 2009 10:37 am      

Cougars fight against Deer Creek, Guthrie in tourney

Edmond — There were no late-inning miracles for Ada Wednesday in games against 5A powers Guthrie and Deer Creek at the rugged Deer Creek Tournament. But there was also no ‘quit’ in the Cougars.

Guthrie banged out 15 hits and outscored Ada, 12-8, in the Cougars’ opener Wednesday afternoon, then Ada ace Tyler Carter lost a spirited duel with Deer Creek’s Tyler Price as the Antlers — 24 hours removed from a 5-4 victory over Class 5A No. 2 Carl Albert — beat the Cougars, 6-3.

“I was disappointed in not winning the first game, but the kids came back and battled,” Ada coach Ronny Johns said after seeing his young squad drop to 9-19 on the season heading into this afternoon’s final pool play contest against Western Heights at 1:30 p.m. “They did a good job of competing.

“We’re just having a hard time staying away from the big inning,” added Johns, whose club was the victim of a six-run Guthrie fourth-inning outburst that broke a 4-4 tie and a bizarre third inning in which Deer Creek scored four times. “But if we put it together, we could be dangerous in the playoffs. I wouldn’t want to play us in the first round of a regional.”

GAME 2

Deer Creek 6, Ada 3

Considering the caliber of the competition (Deer Creek came into the game with a 20-6 record and ranked No. 4 in 5A), Carter turned in arguably the best pitching performance of his varsity career in defeat. The junior lefty surrendered just six hits and three earned runs in a gritty 110-pitch, complete-game effort, and with a little luck he might have pitched the Cougars — who scored six runs in the bottom of the seventh to beat arch-rival Ardmore, 8-7, at home Monday night — to their biggest win of the season.

“Tyler did a great job,” Johns said of Carter, who had beaten No. 8 Lawton Mac, 12-4, in another complete-game effort six days earlier at the Carl Albert Tournament. “(Deer Creek) hit some good pitches, but that’s what good teams do.”

Carter (4-4) carried a 1-0 lead to the bottom of the third, then things unraveled for him in the space of just 15 pitches.

Deer Creek nine-hole hitter Isaac Hellbusch grounded a 2-2 pitch to left for a single leading off the inning, then Zach King laid down a bunt to the left of the mound. Carter fielded the ball cleanly and fired a strike to the usually sure-handed Derick Eidson at first base in the time to get King, but Eidson dropped the ball.

Brian Anderson followed the error with another bunt to the third-base side of the mound and beat it out without a throw from Carter to load the bases, then Carter struck out Deer Creek three-hole hitter Connor Patterson on a nasty change-up that was his bread-and-butter pitch all night. He ran the count to 1-1 on Antler cleanup hitter Cale Coshow, who lifted the next pitch to right-center for what should have been a routine sacrifice fly, but Ada right fielder Dillon Bolin couldn’t find the ball in the early evening sky, and it dropped for a two-run single that scored Bennett Adduddell (running for Hellbusch) and King and gave Deer Creek a 2-1 lead.

Price — who pitched a four-hitter and struck out seven — then lined a 1-0 pitch to the wall in left-center to score Anderson and Coshow before Carter retired Andrew Harlan on a foul pop to Eidson and struck out Pete Rosier to finally end the inning.

Ada answered with two runs in the top of the fourth, with Brendon Barr reaching on Harlan’s two-base throwing error to lead off the inning and scoring on a double to right-center by cleanup hitter Jesse Cashman. Carter followed with a bloop single just inside the right field line to move Cashman to third, then Eidson fought off a tough pitch and squibbed a ground ball to the right side that plated Cashman and made it 4-3.

Carter moved to second on the groundout, but he was stranded when Price coaxed Dillon Bolin and Mark Byers into back-to-back fly balls to center, and the Deer Creek righty worked around a walk in each of the final three innings (his only three walks in the game) to preserve the win.

The Antlers, meanwhile, added a pair of insurance runs — both unearned as the result of the second of three Ada errors in the game — in the bottom of the fourth on Anderson’s RBI double and a sacrifice fly by Patterson. The damage could have been worse if not for a spectacular sliding catch near the right field line by Bolin on a fly ball off the bat of Coshow.

Carter — who had two of Ada’s four hits off Price and finished 4-for-5 in the two games — then pitched a scoreless fifth with the help of a pickoff of Harlan (who had singled with one out) and also shut out Deer Creek in the sixth, thanks to a sliding catch by left fielder Caleb Caudle on a sinking line drive by Hellbusch leading off the inning.

GAME 1

Guthrie 12, Ada 8

Ada wiped out an early 3-0 Guthrie lead and took a short-lived lead with a run in the second — on Carter’s leadoff infield hit, walks to Eidson and Bolin and a sacrifice fly by Byers — and three more in the third on Eidson’s RBI single and a two-run double to left-center from Byers, who finished with three hits and a career-high four RBIs. The third inning could have been even bigger if Guthrie right fielder Clayton Lawson hadn’t laid out to make a highlight-reel catch on a drive to right-center by Brendon Barr (the second Ada batter in the inning).

The Blue Jays tied it in the bottom of the third on an RBI single by Hayden Seifert (who had singled home two runs in the first inning and finished with four of Guthrie’s 15 hits), then seven hits and two Ada errors in the bottom of the fourth inning fueled a six-run explosion that gave the Blue Jays the lead for good.

Nine-hole hitter Luke Davis — who finished 3-for-3 with a run scored and an RBI — doubled home the first Guthrie run in the fourth and scored the second on the first Ada error in the inning, John Cotton hit a two-run homer to dead center field two batters later to make it 8-4, and the final two run in the frame scored on a throwing error by Cashman, who had relieved Ada starter Preston Dye after Cotton’s homer.

The game featured a scary moment in the top of the fifth, when Carter lined a 2-2 pitch off the face of Guthrie starting pitcher Bryce Hendren. After dropping to his hands and knees and being examined by the Deer Creek athletic trainer, Hendren walked off the field under his own power — his face already beginning to swell under his right eye — and was taken to Mercy Hospital for further examination.

Ada cut the deficit in half on Cashman’s two-out, three-run homer (his third in six games) in the top of the sixth, but Lawson’s two-run single in the bottom of the inning again made it a four-run game. Byers then wrapped up his career game with an RBI double in the top of the seventh to plate Carter (who had walked) with the game’s final run.