Dawg Baseball A Surprise

From the Capital-Journal:

ROSSVILLE — After posting back-to-back seasons that not only saw his Rossville baseball team post just a total of seven wins but also get outscored by 100 or more runs each of those seasons, one might not have expected Bulldawg coach Eammon Bradley to look at his 2019 squad and think of it as a potential state qualifier.

But he did.

“The freshman group we had last year, there were some bright spots there, especially pitching,” Bradley said. “And I thought the kids that are freshmen now, we had an indication of the talent we were getting. And there was progress from the older guys.

“Two summers ago, it was butt-kickings all over the place and there were no signs of, ‘Hey we could be pretty good next year.’ Last summer, there were moments against teams that were older than we were that we were not only competitive but beating those teams. We thought give it another year and we’ll see what might happen. There’s the possibility we could be pretty good.”

Rossville made good on Bradley’s convictions last week when it captured the Class 2-1A regional title at Wabaunsee. Not only did the Bulldawgs win the regional, they dominated it.

Going in as the No. 3 seed, the Bulldawgs outscored their three regional foes 42-0, including an eye-opening 20-0 win over one-loss and perennial state qualifier Mission Valley in the championship game.

Rossville (14-8) will be the No. 6 seed at this week’s Class 2-1A state tournament at the Great Bend Sports Complext, opening tournament play at 5:45 p.m. Thursday against No. 3 seed Sedgwick (15-2).

“That was probably more surprising than anything,” Bradley said of the manner in which his team earned its state berth. “I knew dropping down to 2A, there would be a shot. I knew we’d be young, but there was talent here. We pictured there being a shot at the beginning, but the way did it was a little surprising.”

Making its first state appearance since 2006, Rossville didn’t waste any time serving notice that a breakthrough season could be in the works. In the season opener, the Bulldawgs knocked off defending Mid-East League champion Riley County with a 6-2 win.

The loss was the only defeat the Falcons suffered in league play in the regular season.

From there, Rossville rode a little bit of a roller-coaster. The Bulldawgs, who start six sophomores and freshmen, swept Wabaunsee, but were swept by Silver Lake. Most of their doubleheaders ended with splits.

The up-and-down nature of the season was anything but frustrating for the Bulldawgs.

“The back-and-forth splitting of doubleheaders was an improvement,” Bradley said. “The psyche wasn’t ‘We can’t get a sweep.’ It was more ‘We’re getting wins.’ And we were getting wins against good teams. I think it was a big positive and it wasn’t that difficult to make it a big positive because it was such an improvement over the last two years.”

In addition to knocking off Riley County, the Bulldawgs managed splits with 3A state qualifiers Rossville and Sabetha and also with ranked 4A Anderson County.

The key victory was the win over Sabetha, last year’s Class 3A state champion. Rossville trailed 9-7 going into the bottom of the seventh, but came up with three runs to win in walk-off fashion.

“There were multiple moments for us, moments that were really scattered out,” Bradley said. “But I don’t think it really clicked until the Sabetha win. That was a little different because it was pretty exciting how it happened. That moment was probably the one because now you haven’t done it just once, you’ve done it multiple times against good teams. And even the games we were losing were tight. We kind of realized we weren’t a fluke, we were a pretty good team.”

Pitching and defense have been Rossville’s strong suits all season with only one team scoring double-digits against the Bulldawgs all season, Rock Creek in a 10-7 win late in the season. Those traits held true in regional play as Rossville rode pitchers Bo Reeves (5-2, 0.61 ERA), Aiden Garcia (3-5, 2.39) and Eddie Brockamp (1-0, 3.65) to three straight shutouts.

But Bradley said the biggest difference in the dominant regional run was the Bulldawgs’ offense. Starting with a season-ending sweep of Olpe, Rossville has improved its team batting average by roughly 40 points in five games.

“The development at the plate was big,” he said. “We’ve been good pitching and defensively all year. Teams have struggled putting up runs on us and that’s been true all season. But it wasn’t until regionals where we got pretty consistent run production and started swinging the bat better.”

Now the Bulldawgs hope to ride the momentum to another postseason run in Great Bend.

“We’ll see,” he said. “It’s been practicing inside and a week since we’ve played so you don’t know how you’ll come out and play on that first day. I’d like to say we have momentum ... but I don’t know what to expect. But I think we’ve proven we’re capable.”

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2019 Regional Champs