Nazareth Legion baseball team loses to Kutztown in Region 2 tournament

Wednesday, July 21, 2010
By TOM HINKEL
The Express-Times
WEST LAWN, Pa. | A six-run third-inning explosion ultimately doomed the Nazareth Legion baseball team on Tuesday night.

Andrew Gernert scattered nine hits over 7ø innings and Kutztown scored six times in the third inning to knock Nazareth out of the Region 2 tournament with a 10-5 victory at Owls Field.

Kutztown (26-2) advances to play Tuesday night's Pennridge/Nor-Gwyn winner at noon today. If it's Pennridge, the game would be for the championship. If it's Nor-Gwyn, the winner would play Pennridge later today for the title.

The champion advances to the state tournament next week at Boyertown.

Surprisingly, the Nazareth coaching staff started Jerel Elliott at pitcher instead of ace right-hander Karl Keglovits.

Elliott gave up six runs in three innings. Shane Siebler relieved Elliott and pitched the next two innings. Keglovits entered in the sixth inning with Nazareth already facing an 8-2 deficit.

"We tried to juggle this thing," Nazareth manager Frank Jurasits said. "My feeling was, if we started Karl, he wasn't going to go nine innings as hard as he throws. Then we'd have a problem when we needed a reliever. (Today) we would have had to grab the bag again."

Keglovits recorded a groundout and two strikeouts to work out of a bases-loaded, no-out jam when he entered in the sixth inning.

"I'm really surprised they didn't start Karl," Kutztown manager Chuck Ciganick said. "I just can't believe it. I was thinking, 'Oh my god, they're doing us a favor.' There's no way we would have scored that many runs off Karl. We were lucky."

Keglovits pitched a scoreless seventh and eighth inning, but allowed a two-run single to Kyle Isamoyer in the ninth. The hit gave Kutztown a 10-5 lead.

http://www.lehighvalleylive.com/sports/index.ssf?/base/sports-0/1279685126125830.xml&coll=3