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Sports

Penncrest Loses For First Time This Season

The Lions were one-hit against Radnor.

There was nothing that surprising about 2-0 start this season. It was sort of expected by Lions’ coach Steve Silva, with the confidence in Penncrest’s pitching and ability to catch the ball. What’s made things more impressive is that Silva had engineered the nice start with a fairly young team.

So when Radnor visited on Monday in a Central League baseball game, the Lions thought they could build more on what they’ve already done. There was one problem with that—Radnor features right-hander starting pitcher Connor Walsh, the University of Cincinnati commit who is possibly the best pitcher in the league and the area.

Penncrest never got a chance. The Lions stumbled in the first inning and were never able to recover, losing their first game this season, 6-1, behind the 11-strikeout pitching of Walsh.

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"Going into today, I think we were very confident with our defense and pitching," Silva said. "We are a fairly young team and Connor pitched a very good game. We threw well and he deserves the credit. We got caught up into doing too much with our approach to hitting."

Penncrest had outscored its previous two opponents, 15-8, beating Harriton and Archbishop Carroll. So run production wasn’t an issue for the Lions. Radnor, however, had its problems.

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Entering the game, the Red Raiders were struggling offensively. But in one inning, the Red Raiders equaled the total number of runs they scored in the combined previous 14 innings, getting three runs off Penncrest starter Andrew Belfiglio. Radnor senior third baseman Mark McGee-Pasceri added another run with a solo homer in the third inning.

Radnor’s Kyle VonHertsenberg added two hits, a single and a triple, with an RBI. Walsh helped himself with a single and two RBIs. Radnor scored the first four innings. The only inning that Radnor didn’t have a baserunner was in the fifth, when Penncrest reliever, sophomore John Geffres, mowed the Red Raiders down in order, striking out all three batters he faced.

"I wanted to keep the ball down and low and tried to get as many groundballs as I could," Belfiglio said. "Games like this, sometime you don’t have what you want to have. We lost, but we have a good-looking team and I think what really did it for us was that first inning. That kind of killed us. But we’ll bounce back."

Penncrest scored its one run in the fourth inning, when Belfiglio had the Lions’ lone hit, a single, reached third and then scored on a double steal.

The Lions will host Springfield on Thursday.

 

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