MANDAN, N.D. – Hitter or pitcher?
Mayville-Portland-Clifford-Galesburg’s Chase Knudson was both on Saturday.
The Patriots’ right-hander tossed a six-hitter and banged out four hits to lead MPCG to a 4-1 win over Carrington and its first state Class B baseball championship.
Knudson gave up one run in the first inning and it was all goose eggs from there.
Asked to pick what he was most pleased with, Knudson chose hitting. “I think it was,” he said. “I just went up there and thought base hit, base hit, base hit. I wasn’t going to try to rip a home run, just base hits.”
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Knudson drove in two runs and scored one. All told, the Patriots pounded out 10 hits against Carrington starter Brett Lyman and reliever Braxton Hewitt.
Jacob Klath added two hits.
Knudson went six innings. He struck out three and walked three. Klath pitched a scoreless seventh.
The teams exchanged runs in the first inning. May-Port-CG’s Brady Nygaard led off the game with a hit, went to second on Connor Moore’s single and came home on Chase Knudson’s single. Carrington’s Braxton Hewitt singled with one out, moved up on Brady Smith’s single and scored on Easton Paeper’s double.
The Patriots took the lead for good in the fifth.
Garrett Bickett, who came on when starting left-fielder Lucas Geiszler was struck in the face by a fly ball, dropped a pop fly by Aaron Ust. Ust and Knudson, who led off the inning with his third hit of the game, came home on Flath’s double to give the Patriots a 3-1 lead.
“It surprises me that he didn’t catch that ball,” Carrington coach Wayne Shipman said. “But that’s baseball. He’s a freshman. He’ll learn from it.”
May-Port-CG tacked on an insurance run in the sixth after the Cardinals failed to turn a routine double play. Knudson’s single plated Brady Nygaard.
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“We made an error and they got a run and we made another one and they got another run. I wasn’t feeling too bad until that double play that put us down three runs,” Shipman said. “We gave them their last two runs.”
May-Port-CG (14-8) earned a berth in the title game by outlasting Harvey-Wells County 10-7 in the opener. They blew a 5-0 lead and pulled away from a 7-7 tie in the third inning in that game. The Patriots rode a five-run fourth inning to a 6-4 win over Velva-Drake in the semifinals.
The ending was much different that the way the Patriots’ started the tournament.
“We just kind of grinded it,” MPCG coach Eric Nygaard said. “That’s the character of our team. We just had to make plays. It’s not always the prettiest, we just get the job done.”
Carrington (20-7-1) edged Lewis and Clark-Parshall 2-0 in the first round, then knocked off top-seed Grafton 7-4 in the semifinals. The Cardinals spoiled Grafton’s title hopes with a six-run second inning.
Carrington had to win three games on the final day of the region tournament, two against last year’s state champion, just to get to state.
