Kougars rally to knock off Mustangs

Updated: April 29, 2011 10:57PM

Mike Tilley knows what everybody thought. That Kankakee Valley’s blistering 9-0 start, which thrust them into the region baseball conversation and into the state’s top 10, was a mirage. That it came against weak opponents and meant little. That consecutive losses to Andrean (in which the Kougars fell behind 17-0 at one point) and Hobart had exposed KV as a fraud.

But Tilley knew better.

“We know how good we are,” the senior bristled.

Tilley backed up the talk on Friday evening, leading the Kougars to a come-from-behind 7-6 victory at Munster in a key Northwest Crossroads Conference showdown.

Tilley was 3-for-4 with three singles, two runs scored and two RBI — including the go-ahead two-out single in the sixth — and shut down the Mustangs in three sharp inning of relief.

“He’s Mr. Clutch for us,” KV coach Doug Greenlee said.

And Mr. Confident, too.

“The Andrean game and Hobart game didn’t show how good we are at all,” Tilley said. “Tonight showed we can compete with the best in the region. We’re for real. It’s something we’ve known all year.”

It didn’t come easy, though. The Kougars’ first win in 16 days — they’ve only played two games in that span thanks to the miserable weather — wasn’t secure until Tilley struck out Scott Jerge to end one last Munster threat in the bottom of the seventh. In fact, the Kougars had to erase two deficits to pull out the win.

KV was down 3-0 after three innings, with an RBI triple in the third by Munster’s Colin Mudroncik the big blow. KV scratched across a run in the fourth when Tilley scored on David Cooper’s sacrifice fly.

KV then took the lead in a wild top of the fifth. After the first two Kougars grounded out, KV mounted a four-run, two-out rally. Tilley had an RBI single, then Zach DeFries’ bases-loaded, full-count groundout was turned into a two-run error that gave KV a 4-3 lead.

The Kougars then tricked Munster into allowing another run as — with an 0-2 count — DeFries intentionally got himself picked off and into a rundown, allowing Dylan Patrick to steal home and make it 5-3.

It was a sloppy inning in a sloppy game — a game that looked more like opening night than a midseason affair. The long layoff for each team — this game had been postponed three times because of rain — could have played into that.

“Defensively, we just threw the ball around a little bit,” Munster coach Bob Shinkan said. “We gave them opportunities to extend innings and they took advantage of it. They’re a very good ballclub and you can’t give a team like that more than three outs in an inning.”

Munster fought right back, though, scoring three in the bottom of the fifth. Mudroncik had an RBI single, Chris Slivka had a sacrifice fly and Tyler Cole scored from third with the go-ahead run on a passed ball after what should have been an inning-ending strikeout. So Munster led 6-5 after the lengthy fifth inning.

It could have been an even bigger inning for the Mustangs (8-5, 2-2), but Mudroncik was thrown out at home trying to score on a wild pitch. The ball bounced hard off the back wall and back to catcher Jake Wright, who threw to Tilley in time to get Mudroncik — who unsuccessfully (but comically) tried to leap over Tilley at the plate.

“It’s just baseball,” Shinkan said of the bad break. “That’s baseball.”

KV (10-2, 3-2) immediately regained the lead in the top of the sixth on clutch, two-out RBI singles by Tyler Simmons and Tilley.

Remarkably, the Kougars’ last six runs all came with two outs.

“Earlier in the year, even against the weaker teams, we fought hard and battled whenever we were down,” Tilley said. “Those games prepared us for games like this one.”

Despite the impressive record, it had been more than two weeks since KV’s last triumph — “Forgot what it felt like,” Greenlee said. And while Tilley and his fellow seniors never wavered, Greenlee acknowledged that doubt might have been creeping in for some of his players. So this was the biggest win yet for the Kougars.

“No question,” Greenlee said. “Any NCC win is big, especially on the road against a program like Munster. It’s big for our kids. After the last couple of weeks, I think it solidifies in their minds that, ‘Hey, we can play this game.’”

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