We had an eventful and fun week in Morris County Baseball. Going into the week MCHSS.net, the Daily Record and The Star Ledger all had Randolph at #1. Let’s see what that cold spring wind has blown in for Morris County:
Monday (4-9):
West Morris continues their rock solid schedule and falls to Mt. Olive, 2-1. DJ Critchley knocked in the Highlanders’ run in the top of the fifth. The Marauders immediately tied the game when Dave Otey singled. Mt. Olive won the game in the bottom of the 7th when Zach Krumpfer’s single scored Steve Cileni. Mt. Olive improved to 2-1 as West Morris fell to 0-3.
Randolph improved to 3-0, notching a third straight shutout to open the ’07 campaign. Seton Hall Prep shut out Knolls 2-0.
Roxbury looked strong pounding out 13 hits and over Morristown en route to a 12-2 victory.
Pequannock knocks off Caldwell in NHC play. A 5-0 shutout-road victory adds to the Panthers' already impressive young season. Delbarton beat Madison 12-2.
Summit knocked off Parsippany 2-1. The victory was the first the Hilltopper’s new head coach, Kevin Zelesky. Zelesky, a Hanover Park grad and former baseball alum, was a utility player who started 23 out of the 26 games as a sophomore at Marywood University in 2003. Zaleski’s pounded out 28 hits as a junior and batted .333 in 27 games for the Pacers. Senior year saw the East Hanover Native, and son of long time Parsippany High Softball Coach Dave Zaleski, tally 29 hits with 5 doubles and 19 RBI. Morris Hills squeaked out a 2-1 IHC victory over Par Hills.
Hanover handed Chatham an 11-0 loss.
Game of the day: Mendham and Coach Guire may have patented the high scoring teeter-totter battle in ’06. The Minutemen started off ’07 in the same ole Guire-ball fashion. Mendham trailed 5-2 after three-and-a half. The Minutemen were back within one on the bottom of the 3rd, only to trail 8-4 going into the bottom of the 6th. Mendham rallied for 5 runs in the 5th to tie it up at 8, and scored in the bottom 7th to win it in walk-off fashion. John Modero’s singled knocked in the winning run.
Verona handed Kinnelon’s ace Sean Bierman his first loss of the season in CHC play. Jefferson knocked off Montville. This win proves huge for the Falcons, as many Morris baseball faithful know that Montville is a strong team, but the vote is still out on both of the tough squads. The hard-nosed Falcons score 7 in the top of the 7th to come from behind, erasing a 4-1 deficit. This game has a huge effect on my top 10, although, on Tuesday morning, I was unaware how much
Tuesday (4-10):
Dover improved to 3-1 with a 9-8 victory over Newton in non-conference play. The Tigers trailed 8-5 after 3 innings, but put up a two spot in the 4th and 6th to mount the comeback. Whippany Park came back from an 8-0 deficit to lead Bloomfield Tech 12-10 going into the bottom of the 7th. The Wildcats could not hold off Bloomfield Tech and lost 14-12. Mount Olive improved to 3-1 with a 6-2 victory over Kittatinny. Hanover Park exploded for 15 runs in a non conference win over Morris Knolls, 15-1. Morris Hills improved to 2-0 with a 9-4 victory over Vernon. Mountain Lakes stunned 4-0 Cedar Grove with a 9-6 non-conference victory.
Game of the day: Montville avoided being knocked off by Passaic power Wayne Valley.
The Mustangs lead 10-2 after 4, but Wayne Valley racked up 6 runs in the top of the 6th and 3 more in the top of the 7th. The Mustangs were able to get one run in the 6th and 7th to hold off Wayne Valley and improve to 2-1. Iron-side: Morristown gave Seton Hall Prep all they could in a 2-1 loss to NJ’s #1 team.
Wednesday (4-11):
A busy day in Morris County … all games featured conference match-ups.
SCIL: Jefferson strong offensively again tops Vernon 10-7, moving to 4-0.
NHC: Butler beat DePaul 5-3; Delbarton moves to 3-0 with a 15-5 win over Caldwell. Pequannock wins over Lakeland 6-4 and Montville wins over Madison 13-3.
CHC: Mountain Lakes tops Arts 12-0. Kinnelon wins over Science 9-1. Morris Catholic wins their 1st with an important win over Pingry 7-6. Morristown-Beard looks strong over MKA 9-2.
Game of the day #1: Whippany Park stuns Verona 3-1. Verona had just knocked off Kinnelon. The Wildcats and Dan Coriddi held the Hillbillies to 1 run on two hits. Whippany got all 3 runs in the 6th.
IHC-Hills: Chatham responded from their opening loss pounding out 14 runs with a 14-5 victory over Summit. Hanover Park beat Weequahic 12-0. Morris Hills looked very strong against West Essex, winning 12-2. Mendham improved to 2-0 with a 8-2 victory over Parsippany. Parsippany Hills, coming in 0-2 with two one run losses to tough IHC teams outscored Dover 6-4 for their 1st win.
IHC-Iron: Livingston wins 5-0 over West Morris. Morristown shuts out Morris Knolls 2-0. Mount Olive squeaks by Columbia 4-3.
Game of the Day #2: Roxbury 5-0 over Randolph 0. We all knew what Randolph had coming in, and after watching Roxbury and hearing preseason raves from opposing coaches, the Gaels must have had this match-up circled in bright red marker. Todd Burdette allowed only three hits to hold Randolph scoreless. Roxbury tallied 5 runs on the previous unscored-upon Rams. This makes things very interesting in the IHC-Iron side, if someone can knock off Seton Hall Prep.
Friday (4-13):
Columbia spoiled the Gaels stunning win over Randolph and caught Roxbury with an 8-6 victory. Six runs in the bottom of the 6th was just too much for Roxbury to overcome. Randolph came back strong and held off Morristown, 4-3. A 3-0 lead after 1 was not enough to hold off the Rams. With Morristown moving to 2-4 and West Morris 0-4, the state playoffs look almost out of reach for these two quality squads with ultra-tough schedules. These are two teams that no one will want to draw in the MCT, I’ll tell you that much. The IHC will not bow down to NJ #1 Seton Hall Prep. Mt. Olive lead 4-0 after 4, but the Pirates popped in 5 runs in 5th and one more in the 6th for the 6-5 victory, spoiling the Marauders upset bid. Now seriously, how tough is this conference?
Morris Hills beat Chatham 10-0.
Delbarton improved to 4-0 with a 6-0 shutout over Lakeland. Pequannock suffered a tough 14-7 loss at the hands of DePaul giving the green Wave an early 1 game advantage in conference play. Montville outscored Caldwell 7-1 on route to the Mustangs’ 4th victory of the season.
Jefferson, who already had a strong showing this week, was knocked off in SCIL play by Hopatcong. The 6-5 loss was the Falcon’s first of the season.
Morris Catholic was a big winner of Montclair Immaculate and Mountain Lakes passed University 19-1.
Saturday (4-14):
Montville and Randolph squared off in a battle of two Morris County heavyweights and the Mustangs came out standing after 7 tight innings, 7-5. Montville improved to 5-1 aided by Eric Berman’s 3-3 day and Jason Schwartz’ RBI in the 4th to tie the game and game winning RBI in the sixth. Are you ready for one of the deepest MCT’s in years?
The only two conference games saw Morristown-Beard lose to Newark Academy 7-6 and Knolls hand WMC a 5-1 loss.
Out of Conference play saw Dover beat Mountain Lakes 5-2, bringing the Tigers to 4-2 on the year. Madison topped Summit with a 6-5 win. Morristown may have just found a break out game, knocked off a strong Mendham squad 11-1. Pequannock won 6-4 over Wallkill Valley. Roxbury found themselves in another battle, but outscored Pope John 14-13. Seton Hall Prep looked solid with a 3-1 victory over Delbarton, handing the Green Wave their 1st loss of the season. Watching Hills managed to top Hanover 8-5. West Morris put one win the winning column with 6-1 victory over Voorhees. Whippany Park rocked Morris Catholic for 10 runs in a 10-5 victory. The Wildcats kept with the “late inning surge” theme that has been so popular this season. Whippany put up 2 in the 5th and a big 6-spot in the 7th to stun Morris Catholic, who held an early 5-2 lead.
Which brings us to our Player of the week for Week #2: Many teams had big weeks and a ton of runs were scored with a multitude of offensive production across the board, but our player of the week was a big force in Montville’s 4-1 week. (Actually you can add in the Mustangs’ 3-2 win over Morristown last Saturday for this.
In 6 games, Jason Schwartz tallied 11 hits in 23 at bats for a .478 average. Schwartz had two singles and two RBI in Montville’s 8-4 loss to Jefferson. Schwartz followed with a 4-for-5 day against Wayne Valley. He recorded a double, a triple and three RBI in Montville’s 12-11 win, and throw in 2 steals. The next day Schwartz recorded two more hits with an RBI and run scored as Montville beat Madison 13-3. A 2-for3 day with 3 runs scored in a conference win over Caldwell added to his already strong numbers. Schwartz capped the week with a 2-RBI game as Montville knocked off Randolph 7-5. Schwartz scored 2 runs and added two hits against the Rams.
A strong contender for Player of the Week was pitcher/ Third-baseman Todd Burdette of Roxbury. At the plate Burdette went 6-10 in 4 games, including 5 hits in the games against Morristown and Randolph. More impressively, Burdette pitched a shut out, handing Randolph their first loss of the season. He allowed only 3 hits and fanned 9 as Roxbury improved to 4-0 with the win over the Rams.
No comments:
Post a Comment