Knights know anything can happen in the post-season

By Sean Rooney on July 25, 2018.

srooney@medicinehatnews.com @MHNRooney

Look at their regular season record and you might think the K of C Knights have little to no chance when their playoffs begin Thursday.

The last-place Knights only went 6-22 and draw the top-seeded Vauxhall Spurs (24-4) in the Montana-Alberta American Legion baseball North District tournament.

While the double-knockout draw affords teams a second chance, losing the first game isn’t in anybody’s game plan.

It certainly isn’t in Medicine Hat’s.

“We had some close games with Vauxhall,” said catcher Reese Whelen prior to Tuesday’s last practice before heading to Montana. “If we come out and play our best I think we have a good chance of beating them. And Lewistown, who’s No. 2, we beat them two out of four games.”

Which is to say the Knights would’ve loved to climb to seventh place to earn a first-round matchup with Lewistown. But they didn’t, and now they’ll have their toughest test first.

Whelen, who hit his first out-of-the-park home run this past weekend at the park where districts are being held, could help lead the way if an upset is to occur.

“Reese really found his stride, hit a home run and seemed to get barrel every single at-bat after that,” said Knights coach Lane Aman. “He’s started to heat up for sure.

“At this age group anything can happen in any inning. You just never know, you’ve got to keep playing hard no matter what’s happening.”

Last year the Knights upset Vauxhall en route to a top-two finish and spot at the State tournament. They’d love to do some bracket busting again and extend their season.

While the bats can come alive anytime, it’ll be the pitching that could be the telling sign of how the weekend will go.

“We’ll come out guns a’blazing I guess,” said Aman. “Our whole pitching staff has shown glimpses of being really good, and glimpses where they haven’t brought it. We just hope we get a good day out of a guy on any given day.”

Or, as Whelen notes, it’s the second or third pitcher on the mound that will be the difference. Confidence, perhaps led by strong hitting, needs to be infectious.

“Just being able to finish off games strong, we lose a lot of games in the last two, three innings,” said Whelen. “If we could just play a full seven innings we could definitely pull off some wins here.”

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