BOWLING GREEN FACES RUSSELL COUNTY IN SEMIFINALS
RUSSELLVILLE — Logan County struck for three runs in the bottom of the sixth inning, so Bowling Green coach Nathan Isenberg was pretty much out of options.
The free-swinging Cougars had pulled to within three runs of the fifth-ranked Purples on Monday night in quarterfinal play of the KHSAA 4th Region Tournament. At least three fly balls to the outfield had already been lost in the lights. Isenberg wasn’t taking any chances.
Enter Patrick Forbes.
Bowling Green’s do-it-all senior captain actually did it all in Monday’s hard-fought, 11-8 victory over the 13th District champion Cougars. And nothing was more impressive than the seventh inning, when the 6-foot-4, 200-pound Forbes needed just 10 pitches to strike out the side and eliminate Logan County with the kind of closing performance seldom seen in high school baseball.
“Ten pitches … what more needs to be said,” Isenberg said.
An overflow crowd had just seen the Purples handle the pressure — on the road — against a talented Logan County squad.
The Purples, who improved to 25-9 on the season, will now square off with 16th District champion Russell County, a 5-1 winner over Barren County on Monday in quarterfinal play. The Lakers (26-6) have won 13 of their last 15 games.
“We’ve got to play better defense,” Isenberg said. “The park here plays small. In the tournament format, you want to save your pitching as much as possible. We’ve just got to make sure we don’t over-use Patrick.”
Forbes was equally impressive with a bat in his hands.
Batting leadoff, Forbes finished the night 3-for-4, with two doubles, one intentional walk and a towering home run to right-center field in the top of the sixth inning. It was Forbes’ 15th home run of the season, which leads all KHSAA batters. He’s now batting an impressive .576 with 29 extra-base hits and 57 RBI, all team highs.
Only to upstage that with a line-’em-up, mow-’em-down performance to end the game in the bottom of the seventh.
“I like closing,” Forbes said. “It was all fastballs. No breaking pitches. I was probably throwing harder tonight than I have all season.”
The Purples took batting practice on the BGHS campus before boarding the team bus about two hours before first pitch. Forbes and BGHS center fielder Turner Nottmeier point out that any pop fly hit during BP results in five pushups, after that particular player gets out of the cage.
They were laughing about it when it was over.
The Purples scored at least one run in every inning but the seventh, but starting pitcher Isaiah Head faltered after some tough luck in the bottom of the first inning.
Head ran into immediate trouble on Wyatt Beale’s double down the left-field line that put base runners at second and third with no outs.
Leadoff man Chance Sweeny, the Cougars’ starting pitcher, scored on a wild pitch and Beale scored after the Purples couldn’t turn a double play to end the threat.
Logan County would load the bases for second baseman Kade Wall, who delivered an RBI zsingle up the middle to put the Cougars in front 3-1. The Purples got out of the jam on an alert play by BGHS catcher Ethan Madison, who got to a pitch that skipped to the backstop fast enoBugh to retire the Cougars’ Tate McLean on a rundown between third base and home.
It was that kind of game, with three lead changes and all sorts of shifts in momentum.
Bowling Green seemed to take control with a 4-spot in the top of the fifth inning, against Logan County reliever Isaac Stanley. That left the Cougars with a 9-4 deficit and BGHS left-hander Dillon Maners had turned in a strong effort after taking over for Isaiah Head to open the bottom of the second.
Guess again.
Logan County struck for three runs off Maners in the sixth, all with two outs, and a critical error in the outfield, perhaps at least in part due to the dim spots in the outfield. Sweeney, who finished the night 4-for-4, had an RBI single when the Purples’ Turner Nottmeier couldn’t find a fly ball lost in the lights in center field.
“It was a dogfight, definitely,” Logan County coach Ethan Meguir said. “I thought we left a few runs out there … we made some mistakes. We hit the ball with ’em … we just couldn’t get a ‘zero,’ when we were on defense. We’ve got to pitch better.”
Maners battled out of trouble two or three times and gave up eight hits over the course of his five innings on the hill.
“We were hoping Isaiah (Head) could go a little longer,” Maners said. “But it’s the first game, of a tournament, and if I’m not starting, that probably means I’m coming out of the ‘pen.
“I left a few fastballs up, too high. I just tried to stay ahead in the count. The defense worked really well behind me.”
Sweeney, a senior right-hander, worked four innings and gave up five earned runs on eight hits. Logan County relievers Isaac Stanley and Devin Yates kept it reasonably close, but Stanley did surrender Patrick Forbes’ dramatic two-run home run to the opposite field, his 15th of the season.
That blast extended the Purples’ lead to 11-5 and it seemed time to warm up the bus.
The Cougars, however, were far from finished.
Maners, who finished the game with 85 pitches in five innings, gave up back-to-back, run-scoring hits by Sweeney and Wyatt Beale. Yates hit the ball hard, too, but BGHS second baseman Ben Davenport caught his line drive to end the inning.
The Purples finished the game with 15 hits, five for extra bases. Turner Nottmeier, the Purples’ senior center fielder, went 2-for-4 with a fourth-inning sacrifice fly and two RBI.
Nottmeier believes the Purples played a little more relaxed than they did in last week’s KHSAA 14th District championship game, when Warren East slipped past Bowling Green 4-3 at South Warren High School. Maners was the winning pitcher, earning his sixth victory against two defeats. Sophomore outfielder/pitcher Chance Sweeney took the loss, dropping him to 3-5 on the season.
“I think we all play better when we’re relaxed,” Nottmeier said. “That’s when we’ve played our best. We tried to hit line drives and hard grounders, up the middle or to the opposite field, early in the game. I think that showed up on the scoreboard.”
BGHS senior right-hander Dawson Hall (7-2, 3.64 ERA) is expected to start for the Purples in semifinal play against Russell County (27-6) at 5:30 p.m. Tuesday at WKU’s Nick Denes Field. Warren East (24-13) and Clinton County (15-11) will tee it up in the nightcap, with the championship game set for Wednesday at 6 p.m., also at WKU.
“(Russell County has) two good pitchers, they’re very good,” Forbes said. “Once you get this far, you’re always going to be playing really good teams.”
