De La Salle to meet familiar foe College Park in D1 NCS baseball final
They trained together all offseason and now the baseball teams at College Park-Pleasant Hill and De La Salle-Concord will face off for the North Coast Section Division 1 championship.
De La Salle coach David Jeans frankly didn't want to think about it after his team's 10-1 home win over Foothill-Pleasanton on Tuesday.
Antonio Castro blasted two home runs, including a grand slam, and Stanford-bound juniors Tyler Spangler (10th home run) and Graham Schlicht (six-hitter, six strikeouts), did much of the rest as the Spartans (25-4) advanced to their 13th straight NCS title game.
They'll go after NCS title No. 15 overall and ninth in 12 seasons at 1 p.m. Saturday against the Falcons (17-10) at St. Mary's College. College Park won its ninth game in 10 tries with an equally dominating 10-0 win over Casa Grande-Petaluma on Tuesday.
College Park beat De La Salle 5-2 in the 2015 NCS Division 1 final, also at St. Mary's.
'We're great friends with them,' said Jeans after Tuesday's win. The 14-year head coach recently won his 300th game. 'We work out together in the summer and fall. We played them earlier in the year. They're grinders and tough guys. Their record doesn't indicate how well they're coached. Coach (Andy) Tarpley does a great job.'
With that, Jeans excused himself to enjoy Tuesday's victory, which came after Foothill's Jack Fowler led off the game with a long home run. From there, Schlicht didn't allow a single batter even to second base while improving to 10-0. His ERA is 0.75 with 90 strikeouts in 65⅔ innings and just 31 hits allowed. Fowler's homer was the first Schlicht allowed all season.
'Graham was awesome today,' Jeans said. 'He's been that way all year long. He got behind a really good hitter and threw it down the middle. But it didn't faze Graham. He just got back up on the bump and threw pitches for strikes and was consistent. That's the Graham we love.'
Schlicht loved the Spartans' first hit — a grand slam by Castro in the second inning off Take Sato-Kreis (five walks in four innings) to go up 5-1. From there, the familiar De La Salle slug was on with Spangler and Castro going back-to-back with homers in the fifth, followed by a two-run double by Niko Baumgartner.
De La Salle, whose 33-game playoff winning streak was ended last year by Granada-Livermore, has outscored three NCS playoff opponents 37-6. The left-handed hitting trio of Spangler, Castro and Oklahoma-bound center fielder Alec Blair is a combined 100 for 238 (.420 average) with 96 runs, 96 RBIs and 20 home runs.
'We've never had three (in a row) like that before,' Jeans said. 'These guys are really special.'
Spangler said the season-ending loss to Granada last year 'was the worst feeling ever. We were trying to play for our seniors, and seeing them leave the field like that was a terrible feeling. We're trying to get back to that dogpile (to celebrate) at the end. What happened last year can't happen again.'
College Park is a red-hot team that got contributions Tuesday up and down the lineup, including TJ Reinhart and Vincent Vasell, who each had two hits and two RBIs. Winning pitcher James Voorhies fired six scoreless innings. The Falcons managed just four hits off sophomore Cooper Barnes in a 5-1 loss to De La Salle on March 26.
More baseball results: In Division 3 NCS semifinals, top-seeded California-San Ramon (15-11) got an RBI triple from Johnny Edwards and two hits each by Ethan Rye and Jacob Casiano to defeat 12th-seeded Freedom-Oakley 7-4 and now faces sixth-seeded Marin Catholic (16-12), a 4-3 winner over Northgate-Walnut Creek (18-8). A two-run double from Johnny Greco helped pitcher Carson Davis improve to 5-2 with a 1.83 ERA.
NCS softball: Callie Howard fired a three-hitter with 13 strikeouts, leading top-seeded Cardinal Newman-Santa Rosa (21-6) to a 7-0 win over Benicia on Tuesday in a Division 2 semifinal game. The Cardinals will now play Carondelet-Concord (15-12), which got three hits by Angela Gates and 11 strikeouts from Maia Scholtens in an 11-4 semifinal win over James Logan-Union City. The championship is scheduled for Friday but the venue had yet to be determined Wednesday afternoon.
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