Herbert Hoover pitcher Delani Buckner allowed just one hit against Petersburg, a solo home run by Carly Cooper in the fourth inning of the Huskies’ 5-1 win at the state tournament. Craig Hudson | Gazette-Mail
By: Ryan Pritt, Sports Writer | Posted: May 24, 2018 | Source: WV Gazette-Mail
VIENNA — At 10:45 a.m. on Wednesday, Herbert Hoover kicked off the 2018 state softball tournament against Petersburg in a game it would win 5-1.
At 12:18 Thursday morning, the Huskies closed day one of the tournament with another victory, this one a 1-0 win over Chapmanville.
So on day two, which will be played on the same calendar day that on which day one closed, the Huskies will be in the driver’s seat with a chance to win a second straight state championship.
Chapmanville will play Petersburg in an elimination game at 10:30 a.m., with the winner playing Hoover at 2 p.m. and needing two wins to deny the Huskies a repeat title.
“This game is huge and we knew it was going to be tough and it lived up to the hype, it was a great game,” Hoover coach Missy Smith said after the Chapmanville win.
To say the least.
Tigers senior Kenzie McCann and Hoover sophomore ace Delani Buckner matched zero for zero with control of the Class AA tournament on the line.
Finally, in the top of the seventh inning, the bottom of the lineup came through for the Huskies (31-0).
Freshman Cortney Fizer led off with a double to the left-center field gap. McCann bounced back to punch out Buckner, and Jess Canterbury dropped a sacrifice bunt to move Fizer to third.
That brought up No. 9 hitter Taylor Carpenter, who laced a single just inside the third-base line on a 2-2 pitch to bring in Fizer and give Buckner all the run support she’d need.
“She stepped up big and got the hit against Hurricane too [in a tune-up game before last week’s regionals],” Smith said. “When you have a lineup that can put the ball in play . . . I believe in every one of our hitters. Whether it’s one of our starting nine or 10 or somebody off the bench that they can get the job done. Moving that runner over with two outs, I knew Taylor could get the job done.”
Buckner yielded a solo home run to Petersburg pitcher Carly Cooper in the Huskiess first game and three infield singles to the Tigers in the Huskies’ second game, and that was all that separated her from 14 innings of perfection.
Along the way, Buckner struck out 24 and walked none, and the Huskies made just two errors behind her, both occurring on the same play in the fifth inning against Chapmanville.
As good as Buckner was against the Vikings, she was better against the Tigers, punching out 15 and striking out the side in four of the seven innings.
“She threw much better in the second game,” Smith said. “It’s hard to say she threw better when she only gave up one hit, but all of her pitches were rolling in the Chapmanville game. The rise, the screw, the curve, the changeup – she’s a pitcher if one pitch doesn’t work we just go on to the next one and she was great today.”
An unforeseen issue came up as the night stretched on. Under Secondary School Activities Commission rules, pitchers are permitted 14 innings per day, and as the nightcap stretched past midnight both Buckner and McCann’s innings reset. Now, McCann will have just 13 innings to play with and the Tigers need three wins to win a state championship once play begins again on Thursday. Buckner will also have 13 innings, but the Huskies need only to win once.
It was just one example of weird and wacky circumstances matched by unusual plays on the field, and perhaps no team was more affected by it all than Hoover.
Consider the Huskies waited almost exactly 12 hours between games Wednesday, creating a day’s worth of down time in between. But Hoover came out energized from the get-go in the nightcap and needed every last bit of its might to squeeze by the Tigers for the second time this year, in both cases by 1-0 scores.
“We got here about 8 o’clock this morning and left about 3:30 and went to the hotel, fed the girls and they rested and played some games and bonded a little bit,” Smith said. “We left at 6:45 to come back over and started this game at 10:30. The girls — I can’t say enough about their focus. They knew coming in it was going to be a tough tournament. It’s still a tough tournament and we have to finish it tomorrow, but they knew that every challenge that came up today was just one more thing to trip over — we knew what the hurdles were and we were able to get over them today.”
Reach Ryan Pritt at 304-348-7948, ryan.pritt@wvgazettemail.com or follow him @RPritt on Twitter
