BY MARK BROOKS
The good news for Happy Valley is they run-ruled Johnson County 14-2 to open the District 1-2A Baseball Tournament, the bad news was, West Greene was waiting in the wings. The Warriors had no answers for the Buffaloes’ pitching or offense as West Greene opened postseason play with an 18-0 win
West Greene coach Adrian Sauceman said, “This is probably our best combined effort of the season, the way we hit it, pitched it and played defense…to come out and open the district tournament like that is big.”
The pitching effort was the best the Buffs have seen in some time with three pitchers combining for a no-hitter.
Braden McCamey started the game before Jayden Cox and Brandon Hunter came in relief to combine for the no-no.
McCamey did walk the first batter of the game, but struck out the next two batters looking, including the league MVP Drew Blevins. McCamey got Aiden Harbook to groundout to short to end the first inning.
Conor Campbell stroked a solid single to left field to get the Buffs started at the plate. Cox was hit by a pitch as was Kaven Greene to load the bases. McCamey came to plate without a home run this season but that changed with one swing of the bat on the first pitch he saw. The ball landed about 20 feet beyond the left field fence to give the Buffs a 4-0 lead after the grand slam, and the hit sent Happy Valley starter Fermin Carrillo to the bench early.
McCamey later said, “It was actually a change-up and I saw the seams on the ball and knew at the crack of the bat it was gone”.
The Buffs were ahead 4-0 after the first inning.
In the second inning McCamey miss handled a comebacker to put a runner at first base with no outs but he didn’t let that bother him as he sat down the next three batters in order.
In the bottom half of the second inning the Buffs plated six more runs, on only one hit. The effort was aided by four walks, two hit batsman and one error. The big blow was a timely two-out, two-run single by Hunter to increase the lead to 10-0.
Cox came in to pitch in the third inning and sandwiched a couple of walks around a couple of strikeouts to keep the Warriors off the board.
The Buffs once again batted around and scored six more runs. The big hits of third inning were a single off the bat of Bronson Brown to right-center field for an RBI, and a double off the fence by Jhonen Bath.
Cox got the first two batters out in the fourth inning before walking Parker Williams, but Williams was quickly erased when he was caught stealing. Williams broke for second and was gunned down by Bath who threw a strike to Campbell to end the inning.
The Buffs added a couple more insurance runs in the bottom of the inning to make the score 18-0.
Hunter entered the game in the top of the fifth inning trying to preserve the no-hitter for the Buffaloes, he got two quick outs and was one strike away from the final out and the no-hitter twice before walking back-to-back batters, but a line drive to Brown sealed the no-hitter but more importantly the win.
McCamey also garnered an RBI when he was hit by a pitch with the bases loaded to give him five for the game and was the winning pitcher.
