Orange County starting pitcher Austin Oliver confessed he was jacked up about the chance to play out-of-district rival Louisa County. His coach saw that early too. Although Oliver threw a healthy amount of pitches in the first and second inning, he still had his stuff from start to finish when he needed it. Thanks to a complete game and a defense behind him that committed just one error and an opportunistic offense, Oliver lead the Hornets to a 6-2 road win in Mineral on Friday night.
“You can’t ask for anything more than what he gave us,” said Orange coach Joe Morabito of his starter. “He had the adrenaline going early but when he settled in he was able to get us ground balls when we needed them and fly balls when we needed them. Tonight we just played baseball. I thought the guys made a nice adjustment of thinking back against a pitcher that wasn’t throwing hard at them. You tend to want to pull the ball in that situation and so I challenged the guys to go the other way. They did a great job of that and manufactured some runs.”
With Oliver dealing on the mound, Orange found a critical rally in a scoreless game in the top of the third. With one out, the Hornets earned a walk and then put runners in scoring position when Lonnie Dillard reached second on a fielding error on a hard hit fly to centerfield. The Hornets got balls hit from Tyler Seal and Rahiem Cooper to the right side of infield sandwiched inbetween a walk issued to Oliver. The two balls put in play resulted in errors which allowed Orange to seize a 3-0 lead. With two outs, Ryan Hutchinson’s single advanced Cooper to third and an RBI single from Tony Murphy made it a 4-run lead.
“(Errors) have been the big problem this year,” said Louisa coach Kevin Fisher. “That’s what we talked about afterwards. All year long it’s been about one inning and it’s killed us. We made two errors and I’m looking at the game, if we make those plays, they don’t score that inning… We could have been looking at a 2-1, 2-2 ball game going into extra innings without those mistakes.”
In the fifth Cooper came up with the game’s biggest hit, a shot that slammed into Louisa’s big green monster in center. The triple scored Oliver who led the inning off with a walk.
“My first two at-bats I was struggling to stay back because it’s not what we’ve been used to (from the Commonwealth District) pitchers,” Cooper said. “Usually you get your best hit in your third at-bat, in my opinion. I stayed back and it flew out to center.”
Cooper then scored thanks to a sacrifice fly from Hutchinson.
Heading into the seventh, Oliver was working with a 3-hitter. Louisa’s offense finally came to life with its back against the wall, leading the inning off with back-to-back singles from Alex Fletcher and Christian Buckler. Thomas Dunnavunt drove in the first Lions run with a 2-strike RBI single and Josh Carter followed with a sacrifice fly to bring home another runner.
“We finally put the ball in play and go some base runners,” Fisher said. “Obviously it’s tough to score without base runners. We swung the bats in the seventh the way we have swung them most of the year.”
However, Oliver locked back in to earn a game ending ground ball hit to third base. He finished giving up just six hits and walked only two batters while striking out six.
Orange (3-7) jumps back into CD play with a road game against Albemarle on Friday at 7 p.m.
Louisa (3-5) opens up its Jefferson District slate with a trip to Fluvanna County on Friday at 7:30 p.m.
“I was just trying to blow it past everybody, honestly, and it just worked out pretty good,” Oliver said. “Tonight the hype had me with a little extra behind (my fastball). They weren’t hitting the fastball well so we stayed with it. I went with the breaking ball when I needed it, but mostly it was just about ball placement on the fastball. We worked inside, then worked outside. In, out.”
