Iowa City West puts it together offensively to win 4A quarterfinal

DES MOINES - It's really not supposed to work this way.

You don't go from not hitting a thing to hitting everything. Except if you're the Iowa City West baseball team, apparently.

'I was pretty nervous, but we needed to pull it together and did,” Trojans catcher Spencer Wiskus said, after his club's 11-3 win over Des Moines East in a Class 4A state tournament quarterfinal Wednesday night at Principal Park. 'We never quit.”

West (33-11) didn't touch East starting pitcher Jeremy Bentley the first time through the batting order. It was nine up, nine down for the sidearming left-hander, as the Scarlets built a 3-0 lead.

But Kevin DeLaney singled through the left side leading off the bottom of the fourth inning, and West suddenly flipped a switch. Seven of the next 10 Trojans had hits, as West scored five times in the fourth and three more times in the fifth.

Oliver Martin's three-run triple to dead center put West on top for good in the fourth. Three runs in the sixth made it a remarkable turnaround and an unxepected rout.

The Trojans finished with 12 hits, all in their final three at-bats. The top three of DeLaney, Izaya Ono-Fullard and Wiskus each went 3-for-4.

'Once one hit gets down, we get the rest,” said Wiskus. 'We just keep coming and coming. We string hits together and score runs.”

'Their pitcher is a bit funky, is a little bit tough to see,” said West Coach Charlie Stumpff. 'I think it just took us awhile to get through the lineup and see him. Then we just turned it on. We've had good fortune with that all year. We get behind but keep battling. The regular season really helped us out with that. Guys kept believing.”

Because of that, Stumpff was asked if he anticipated this rally.

'Absolutely not,” he said. 'What you're thinking is that it's one of those nights ... Then everything just broke open. Kevin came through with that first hit. The top of our order has been just fantastic. They are playing baseball incredibly well right now.”

Starting pitcher Austin Miller was greeted by three straight hits to start the game, including Chino Alcala's booming two-run double for East (23-21), but he eventually settled down and got the win. He credited throwing more offspeed pitches for that.

'The first inning, I had a little bit of jitters,” he said. 'The offense has come through for me all year, so just wait it out. Just keeping doing (my thing) out there and get the jitters worked out. I got them worked out, and we started hitting the ball right. You can't ask for more than that.”

West gets Cedar Rapids Kennedy (30-11) in Friday night's semifinal, with an approximate 7:30 first pitch. Tanner Lohaus will get the ball for the Trojans, likely opposed by University of Iowa signee Zach Daniels.

Kennedy swept a regular-season double-header, 4-0 and 6-3, though West has won 13 of its last 14 games and 20 of 22.

'There's nobody I respect more than (Coach) Bret (Hoyer),” Stumpff said. 'Kennedy, what they do, speaks for itself. I wish they weren't so good, but they are, and it's a great honor to play them. We're going to have to play clean ... It should be a really good game, if we play well. It's kind of on us to play well and hang in with them.”

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