Southwest falls to Otay Ranch, 2-1
EL CENTRO — Twenty-one-and-four, 12-0 in the Imperial Valley League. That’s the resume the Southwest Eagles came soaring into Tuesday’s CIF-SDS Division II playoff game against the visiting Otay Ranch Mustangs.
They were one of the biggest sports stories in the Valley.
Now they’re just another first round exit, falling 2-1 in a barnburner here at Mickey Carter Field.
Speaking ahead of the game, Eagles’ coach Matt Redden anticipated that star pitcher Ethan Ross would be the contest’s x-factor for the win.
And Ross made him look pretty smart.
He opened the game up with three strikeouts in the first, and was fairly dominant most of the way through, racking up 11 Ks all told.
The only problem for the Eagles was that the Mustangs’ Octavio Corona was just as hard to square up on.
After giving up a run in the bottom of the first off a Derek Silva single, scoring leadoff man Logan Chell, Corona was lights out the rest of the way.
The Eagles managed to nurse their 1-0 lead all the way until the top of the fifth, when Otay Ranch broke through, scoring on a wild pitch with runners at the corners to tie things up.
Southwest had a good shot to pull back ahead in the bottom of the inning, getting themselves into a bases-loaded situation, but failed to bring anybody home.
The game stayed knotted until the top of the seventh, when the Mustangs’ Noel Perez drove in Noah Isley with an RBI single, scoring the winning run. The Eagles hooked for reliever Danny Ramirez after that, but it proved to be the winning run.