San Marcos stuns Cedar Ridge in playoff
Moments after his club poured out of the dugout to celebrate a 2-1 win over Cedar Ridge in a one-game Class 6A bi-district playoff series at Dell Diamond, San Marcos coach Bryan Webb offered some editorial advice to an inquisitive reporter.
“I told the kids that the headline in the Statesman will say, ‘Rattlers shock the Raiders,’” he said.
Well, how about San Marcos stunning Cedar Ridge and a partisan crowd just a couple of miles from the Raiders’ campus? The win was definitely more than a surprise, considering that San Marcos (13-21) barely qualified for the playoffs in District 14-6A while Cedar Ridge (21-11) shared the District 13-6A title with Round Rock and earned a top playoff seed for the first time in school history.
Webb acknowledged his team’s underdog status, which prompted his decision to flip for a one-game series.
“They’ve had a rough year, and we wanted that one game,” he said. “We wanted to make this a twoor three-inning game and limit their sticks, and that’s what happened.”
The manner of the upset proved as astonishing as the result. After collecting one harmless hit against Cedar Ridge starter Nick Oslovar through the first 5⅔ innings, San Marcos reeled off four straight hits that plated two runs and gave the Rattlers a 2-1 lead.
“Hits are contagious,” said Josh Wilder, a Brown signee who had two of the Rattlers’ five hits against Oslovar. “He’s a good pitcher, but everybody kept battling, and we strung a few together.”
None of the hits in the sixth was a rocket, and all came with two outs. Isaac Mancias and pitcher Ruben Miranda poked a pair of singles into the outfield before Wilder sliced a single just down the firstbase line that scored Mancias. Nick Villalobos then dropped a blooper into shallow center to drive in pinch runner Isaac Gonzalez and give San Marcos the lead.
“They tried to extend at-bats, and it paid off for them,” Cedar Ridge coach Daryl Reeves said.
According to Reeves, his team’s inability to track the offspeed pitches by Miranda was the biggest difference in the game. The Raiders managed just four hits against the San Marcos senior, who received the start over Wilder and earned the complete-game win. Cedar Ridge scored fewer than two runs for just the fourth time this season.
“That guy (Miranda) is not going to throw a lot of fastballs,” Reeves said. “They had a good game plan, but we helped them out with a lot of weak contact early. We’ve hit the ball well all year and didn’t today. That’s what stinks about losing a one-game flip.”
San Marcos picked up a rare win when it didn’t outslug a foe. The highest-scoring team in District 14-6A, the Rattlers won a game for the first time this season without scoring at least five runs. They head to a second-round playoff meeting vs. Aldine MacArthur or Klein.