Carmel powers past Bison

Carmel's baseball players hold up their sectional championship plaque after beating Buffalo Grove 16-1.
(Josh Peckler/News-Sun)

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An 11-run fourth inning lifted Carmel High’s baseball team to a 16-1 thrashing in five innings of Buffalo Grove in the championship game of the Class 4A Libertyville Sectional on Saturday.

The top-seeded Corsairs (32-5) sent 16 batters to the plate in the fourth frame to score the 11 runs on just 4 hits against 4 different Bison pitchers. Carmel was aided in the rally by 6 walks and 2 batters hit by pitches.

“You don’t expect a sectional game to be like this, but Buffalo Grove had a great run (in the state tournament) – they just ran out of gas,” said Carmel coach Chuck Gandolfi of the 14th seeded Bison (14-15).

Buffalo Grove opened the scoring with a single run in the top of the first inning off Carmel starting pitcher Bobby Lyne (8-2), but the Bison never muster much of an offense after that.

Carmel took the lead for good in the bottom of the first inning with a pair of runs, helped by a lead-off triple from Brian Siedlecki (1 for 2, 2 walks, 3 runs), a RBI single by Donald Stopka (3 for 4) and a run-scoring ground out by Lyne.

The Corsairs pushed across three unearned runs in the next two innings, before erupting in the fourth to invoke the 10-run slaughter rule. Two-run doubles by both Joey Pudlo and pinch-hitter Eric Stevenson, along with a two-run single by Stopka were the key hits in the double-digit frame.

“We knew Buffalo Grove was going to be dangerous because they beat Lake Zurich and Mundelein, so we really didn’t know what to expect,” said Stopka. “We only beat Highland Park (in the sectional opener) 1-0, so it was good to see our bats come around in this game.”

Carmel advances to the Schaumburg Supersectional on Monday at 7 p.m. at Alexian Field (home of the Schaumburg Flyers) with a berth to the IHSA State Finals on the line. This is Carmel’s fifth sectional title in Gandolfi’s 20 seasons at the helm of the Corsairs.