Schalick edges Paulsboro; Pokrovsky gives up one hit, fans 16, collects 100th strikeout of the season, 100th career hit
SOUTH JERSEY GROUP I BASEBALL PLAYOFFS
Thursday’s results
No. 1 Audubon 14, No. 16 Camden Academy Charter 3
No. 8 Haddon Twp. 8, No. 9 Buena 1
No. 5 Woodstown 3, No. 12 Maple Shade 1
No. 4 Pennsville 10, No. 13 Gateway 0
No. 6 Schalick 3, No. 11 Paulsboro 1
No. 3 Pitman 13, No. 14 Glassboro 0
No. 7 Wildwood 2, No. 10 Cape May Tech 1
No. 2 Gloucester 16, No. 15 Penns Grove 3
Second Round (May 29)
Haddon Twp. at Audubon
Woodstown at Pennsville
Schalick at Pitman
Wildwood vs. Gloucester
By Al Muskewitz
Riverview Sports News
PITTSGROVE – The Schalick Cougars won playoff game over a familiar playoff foe without playing their best baseball, but that kind of thing is a little easier to do when you have a pitcher like Luke Pokrovsky on the your side.
Pokrovsky had another milestone day Thursday in the sixth-seeded Cougars’ 3-1 win over No. 11 Paulsboro in the opening round of the South Jersey Group I playoffs.
The junior left-hander allowed one soft single over 6 1/3 innings and matched his career-high of 16 strikeouts for the third time this season and second time in three outings to surpass 100 Ks for the season. He also singled in his first at-bat for the 100th hit of his career – then was intentionally walked his next three times up.
“I was going into the game knowing that I only needed one hit for my 100th and that’s all I was trying to do at the plate, stay simple and hit the ball hard,” Pokrovsky said. “I got the first pitch off-speed and I just tried to get the barrel to the ball and it ended up working out.
“I didn’t even realize about the Ks because after I got the school record I just haven’t tried for that stuff. I just tried to lead the team to a victory by throwing strikes and getting weak contract.”
That’s what he did Thursday. He threw 68 strikeouts among his 112 pitches and the only hit he allowed came with two outs in the fourth inning when Kayden Weber threw his bat at a pitch and knocked it into left field to plate the Red Raiders’ only run.
Pokrovsky struck out the first five batters he faced, including Matt Hill to end the first inning for his 100th strikeout of the season. He has 113 this year and 248 in his career.
The only reason he came out of the game in the seventh was because he reached his pitch limit. Lucas D’Agostino finished it off by striking out the only two batters he faced on seven pitches.
With six days between games, count on Pokrovsky starting the Cougars’ second-round game at Pitman Wednesday.
“He’s our guy,” Schalick coach Sean O’Brien said. “If we’re going to lose, we’re going to lose with him. If we’re gonna win, we’re gonna win with him. So he’s definitely a guy we have to rely on.
“I’m looking at his numbers, it’s crazy. It kind of blows you away, you’re like wow. It’s pretty awesome.”
The Cougars were playing Paulsboro in the playoff for the third time in the last four years. They knocked the Red Raiders out of the playoffs in the SJ Group I semifinals in 2021 and the Red Raiders knocked Cougars out in the 2022 semis.
Runs were hard to come by. The Cougars, who had only six hits themselves, pushed two across in the third on a wild pitch and Ricky Watt’s sacrifice fly and added an insurance run in the sixth on a bases-loaded hit batsman. Jake Siedlecki had two hits and Watt had two RBIs.
They left the bases loaded twice, but three runs was all they really needed with Pokrovsky dealing from the mound.
“We didn’t play our best, we didn’t do well offensively, but we found a way,” O’Brien said. “In other parts of the season they’re the type of games we didn’t win … we kind of folded and we ended up losing games. It felt good to kind of push through when you don’t play your best.
“It definitely showed a little bit of growth and that little bit of grit we have where we weren’t going to kind of give up because things weren’t going our way. It was good to have that moment where we struck up and found a way to get runs and having Luke on the mound is definitely a huge plus where we don’t have to do much behind him because he’s the one running the show.”
Riverview Sports News 