Panthers rally, Knights answer

DAVENPORT - The number-one team in Class 3A wasn't getting out of Modern Woodmen Park without a fight. The Mt. Pleasant baseball team rallied from an early four-run deficit to tie up No. 1 Davenport Assumption, but the Knights were too much in the end, pulling away 9-5.

Mt. Pleasant suffered from a rocky start for the second-straight postseason game in a row. Assumption scored one run in the first, and after the Panthers stranded the bases loaded in the top of the second, put up three more in the bottom half of the second to take an early 4-0 lead.

The Panthers couldn't responded in the third, but Corbin Broeker relieved starting pitcher Jaxon Hoyle and worked a one-two-three inning to stop the bleeding on defense. In the fourth, the offense went to work.

After back-to-back walks to star the fourth inning, Chase Williamson sent a lightning bolt into the Panther dugout with an infield single that forced a high throw and brought in courtesy runner Cooper Keldgord in to score. Two batters later, Rylan Seberg crushed a bases-loaded, two-RBI double to left to cut the lead to 4-3.

Mt. Pleasant wasn't done yet. On a one-out swinging-bunt from Nik Coble, Broeker dashed home, diving in to score the game-tying run.

Broeker escaped a jam in the bottom of the fifth to keep the game knotted up at 4-4, but unfortunately for the fans in Maroon and Gold, Assumption still had five runs left in them.

Seth Adrian, the same guy who gave Assumption their initial 1-0 lead, lined a go-ahead RBI double in the fifth. That hit came off Coble, who relieved Broeker after a leadoff walk. The Knights would go on to score two more in the fifth and two in the sixth to take a 9-4 lead.

The Panthers clawed back in their final at-bat, plating one runner on a Dalton Gardner sacrifice fly and eventually getting the potential tying run in the on-deck circle, but Mt. Pleasant ran out of time, and outs, and their season came to an end.

'We walked in here and took on number one,” said Panther head coach Brent Broeker. 'We weren't supposed to compete against these guys. I thought our kids did a great job, even though they were down 4-0, of just not giving up.”

Assumption moved on to the Substate final against Clear Creek-Amana, who nipped Solon 8-7 in the other semifinal. Mt. Pleasant finished the season 15-7 with a share of the Southeast Conference title, the second-straight shared SEC crown for a core group who had small numbers and small expectations heading in to 2019. 'We knew that our senior group wouldn't be scared of them,” Coach Broeker said. 'They played youth baseball where they played tough teams, and they didn't care who it was. They just went out and played, and that's kind of what happened tonight.”