Waubonsee gets jump on JJC in Game 1 of regional baseball series

JOLIET – In his three decades as baseball coach at Joliet Junior College, Wayne King has seen it all.

That may not be true of the current roster of Wolves, however. That's what makes the remaining two games in the best-of-three Region IV Division III Regional against Waubonsee all the more intriguing.

JJC had home-field advantage entering Friday afternoon's series opener, but that perk slipped away when Waubonsee scored an unearned run in the top of the ninth inning off relief ace Trevor Maly to grab a 2-1 victory.

The series shifts to Waubonsee for a noon game Sunday. The third game, which the Wolves are banking on becoming necessary, would be played at 3 p.m. Monday at Wayne L. King Jr. Field on the JJC campus.

The Wolves (32-29) had a long afternoon attempting to solve freshman right-hander Jared Liebelt. The West Aurora graduate scattered five hits, walked one and struck out 10.

The only inning where JJC managed more than one hit was the seventh, when Glenn Kubek singled, Davis Purviance beat out an infield single and Sam Muszynski hit a sacrifice fly to right field to match the run the Chefs had scored in the top of the sixth and tie it, 1-1.

"Liebelt pitched really well," King said. "He's a good pitcher. We had not seen him previously (the Wolves beat the Chiefs twice during the regular season). We rolled some over against him instead of going the other way."

Liebelt enrolled at Villanova out of high school and was there for a semester. But homesickness brought him back to Aurora and to Waubonsee (34-17).

Chiefs coach Brad Unger, a Plainfield Central graduate, has done work with noted pitching guru Tom House. That association introduced Liebelt to House's training methods, and he has added several miles per hour to his fastball. A speed gun on his pitches Friday indicated he was hitting 91.

"This was a good game, a good pitchers' duel," King said. "You have to tip your hat to them."

Right-hander Pat Kenny went the first six innings for JJC and allowed one run on four hits while walking one and striking out six. He recorded big strikeouts to end mild threats in the third and fifth innings. Waubonsee finally broke the scoreless tie in the sixth on a single, stolen base and Klay Nafziger's double.

Brennan Polcyn relieved Kenny and worked a scoreless seventh inning, with the help of an excellent catch in deep center field by center fielder Jermaine Terry. It was Terry's second defensive gem as he also had made a diving catch of a line drive while racing toward the infield in the first inning.

"Terry is an athlete," King said. "Those are plays he is supposed to make."

When JJC rallied to tie it in the bottom of the seventh, King inserted Sunday's starting pitcher, Charlie Wright, as a pinch-runner for Kubek. Wright came around to score the tying run.

"Charlie is fast He has good baseball instincts," King said. "If you asked him, he would tell you he should be playing in the outfield for us."

But outside of the seventh inning, the Wolves did little offensively. They left one runner total over the final five innings and never stranded more than one in an inning. The seventh was the only inning where they put a runner in scoring position.

The decisive ninth-inning run for Waubonsee scored with two outs on second baseman Jeff Szubert's throwing error, his second of the game. Both times, he threw a lob toss well off the target.

"I don't know why," King said when asked about Szubert's sudden throwing issue. "He's telling me he is OK (physically). Maybe it's him wanting to be out there, which you admire. We'll find out what it is before Sunday."

King said when he brought Maly into the game in the eighth, "I felt good about where we were. He's been good all year. I knew they wouldn't bang him around."

Unfortunately, the ninth-inning fielding issues were symbolic of the type of things the Wolves have seen before.

"We hurt ourselves with the couple errors in the ninth, but that's the way things have gone," King said. "That's why we're 32-29. In a great game like this, you can't do that stuff."

So now, there is nothing left but to regroup.

"There is no situation I have not experienced," King said. "But what have these kids experienced? They have to be tight when they come out Sunday. But the big thing is, we have to hit. We have to score some runs. We do that, and we will be OK."