Prep baseball: Marin Catholic advances, stays home for semifinals

Marin Catholic’s Cooper Mitchell says there’s no secret formula to his team’s late season surge.

Mitchell, a junior first baseman, attributes the recent success to simply playing well at the right time.

In Tuesday’s North Coast Section Division III baseball quarterfinals, the Wildcats pounced on Kelseyville for nine runs in the opening two innings and coasted to an 11-4 victory on a pleasant Friday in Kentfield.

Marin Catholic (15-12), the No. 6 seed, advances to the semifinal at 5 p.m. Tuesday when it will host No. 10 Northgate (18-7).

Northgate advanced to the semifinal game by upending No. 2 Piedmont 5-0 on Friday.;

“We were all confident coming into the playoffs,” said Mitchell, who accounted for three of MC’s 11 hits. “We’re playing a lot of good baseball right now.”

The Wildcats were good from the word go against No. 14 Kelseyville (19-5), a 12-2 upset winner against No. 3 Del Norte in an opening round game.

The Knights, however, were stripped of any armor they might have fit in place when the Wildcats sent 17 batters to the plate in the first two innings and built a 9-0 lead.

“We’re playing with a lot of confidence.” said Mitchell, who blistered a two-run double over the third base bag to highlight MC’s five-run first. “We kind of found ourselves and started playing for each other toward the end of the season. And now we just want to keep on going.”

Marin Catholic kept the first inning going long enough to bat through the order after cashing in on a couple of costly infield errors.

Second baseman Jude Baker, one of the few seniors in the starting lineup for the Wildcats, put an exclamation point on the first inning outburst with a two-out, run-scoring double far over the left fielder’s head.

“I think we just started playing with a lot more freedom toward the end of the season,” MC coach Jesse Foppert said. “At some point – for whatever reason – the guys started playing for each other instead of worrying about individual stuff like stats.”

Marin Catholic starting pitcher Walker Untermann, a junior, was in command even after he was the beneficiary of a huge lead.

Untermann scattered seven hits over his five-inning stint, striking out five and not allowing a walk.

Marin Catholic’s power-hitting shortstop Johnny Greco, a sophomore, extended the Wildcats lead to 8-0 with one swing of his bat in the second.

After leadoff batter Luke Martin walked and Carson Davis reached on Kelseyville’s third infield error in less than two innings, Greco stepped to the plate and blasted a 1-0 fastball over the left-field fence for a three-run homer.

“He’s got a lot of bat speed,” Foppert said.

The Wildcats added single runs in the fourth and fifth innings to ice the victory. Baker, who was 3 for 4 at the plate, knocked in his second run with a single in the fourth.

Foppert was unsure of his starting pitcher for Tuesday’s semifinal, but indicated it would probably be either Davis or Mitchell.