Prep baseball: Big inning, costly mistakes cost Burlington in loss to Mount Pleasant | The Hawk Eye – Burlington, Iowa

Alek Barton made himself a promise prior to Saturday’s Class 3A substate quarterfinal game against Southeast Conference rival Burlington.

“I told myself today is the day you’re going to get a big hit,” said Barton, Mount Pleasant’s junior second baseman who had been mired in a slump much of the season.

Barton stayed true to his word. His two-run double highlighted a six-run uprising in the third inning and helped propel the Panthers to a 7-4 victory over the Grayhounds at Wayne Duke Field.

Mount Pleasant (16-13) advances to a substate semifinal to face No. 10 Davenport Assumption (25-13) at 7 p.m. Monday at North Scott High School in Eldridge.

BHS, which won two of the three regular-season meetings with Mount Pleasant, bows out with a 22-10 record.

If Barton’s two-run double wasn’t enough, he made a perfect relay throw to nail Austin Donahoe trying to stretch a double into a triple to lead off the fourth inning.

“I started off pretty hot in the season and since then I have been kind of slowing down,” Barton said. “My mindset in the batter’s box today was a little different because we knew this could have been our last game.”

Mount Pleasant coach Brent Broeker, who recently picked up the 400th win of his coaching career, never lost faith in Barton. It paid off in a big way in the biggest game to date.

“With him, he’s struggled all year,” Broeker said. “Just the last week, week and a half he’s finally turned it on a little bit. It’s great to see him have some success and not give up. At the end of the year, a lot of kids, after struggling like he did for half of the year, will just kind of shut down. But he kept battling. We kept him in the lineup and he did good things for us today.”

BHS broke on top in the first inning. DeAndre Tatylor was hit by a pitch, advanced to second on a ground out by Cohen Schroeder, took third on a single by Michael Kantzavelos and scored on a delayed double steal.

That would be all the Grayhounds would have to cheer about until the sixth inning.

Four BHS errors and two base-running blunders would open the floodgates and ultimately lead to the Grayhounds’ demise.

Mount Pleasant sent 10 batters to the plate, had four hits and two walks and took advantage of two BHS errors to plate six runs in the third inning.

Barton knocked in Grayson Lowery and Kaden Schadt and Griffen Jones cleared the bases with a three-run double to left-center field.

The inning began with Lowery’s bloop single which fell in front of Schroeder.

“That little blooper that Cohen stopped running on and let it fall right in front of him. Then you go to an E4 and a walk,” BHS coach Griffin Dean said. “Baseball is contagious. You give people base runners and a hit here or there … I wish I had a special sauce to get that to stop rolling.”

A pair of base-running mistakes compounded the uphill battle. Donahoe roped a line drive to the fence in right-center field leading off the fourth inning. Right fielder Ryan Helling threw a perfect strike to Barton, whose relay throw to third baseman Ethan Peck was right on the money to get Donahoe.

“I wasn’t really expecting him to go to third. It was a hard-hit ball. It got to the fence and Ryan was there. I heard three and I turned around and he was still running, so I made the throw,” Barton said. “Right then and there it was a pretty good play. That was a really big play right there.”

“It’s one of those where they have a guy at second and he kept coming. Barton turned and threw and it was right on the nose,” Broeker said. “We made the big play when we had to and they struggled to. That’s the difference in the game.”

BHS scored a run in the fifth when Kantzavelos singled in courtesy runner Roy Brown, then added two more in the sixth on a pair of Panther errors.

BHS threatened in the sixth inning. Caden Zaugg singled with one out and Donahoe drew a walk.

But Zaugg was thrown out trying to take third on a double steal for the second out.

“I’ll take the blame on the double and triple. I wasn’t at third base. I was worried about pitch count. I didn’t get over there. I’m normally not worried about it. I tried to beat (Donahoe) over there and I didn’t. I’ll have to eat that one,” Dean said. “The base running error in the seventh .. we talked about it and he said he was confident that he could get there. You have to explain the game situation, especially in a 2-0 count. The next pitch is ball three and then you have one pitch and the bases loaded down three. Learning. Obviously you don’t want those in the high-pressure situations, but welcome to high school baseball.”

Relief pitcher Schadt walked Brody Guernsey before striking out Noah Krieger to end the game.

“It’s all about pressure. We had Donahoe under pressure in two or three innings. In the third inning we connected with some baseballs. That’s the reason we won it,” Broeker said.

BHS said goodbye to 10 seniors, leaving some huge shoes to fill next season.

“They’re going to leave a void, for sure,” Dean said. “There are 10 of them. Eight of them have been in the program their whole lives. Five or six have played since they were sophomores. Brody played as a freshman. It’s a big class. It’s going to be a lot of holes to fill for next year.”