The higher seeds both took care of business Thursday night in the 2A baseball quarterfinals at BYU as No. 4 Kanab topped No. 9 Grand County 10-4 in the initial evening contest followed by No. 2 Beaver outlasting No. 3 Enterprise 3-0 to cap off the day.
The Cowboys wore down the Red Devils, scoring eight of their 10 runs in two of their last three innings at the plate.
“It was a good team win,” Kanab head coach Craig Brinkerhoff said. “We had a lot of guys really hit the baseball well. … Everybody contributed.”
It was the first game of the week for both squads, each winning their pod last week before coming to Provo.
Grand entered the contest coming off the biggest upset of the tournament, when the Red Devils took down top-seeded San Juan Saturday afternoon.
Kanab’s victory kept the school from becoming the Red Devils’ third straight win over a higher seed. The Cowboys jumped ahead early, scoring two runs in the first followed by two scoreless innings. Then they broke things open with a three-run fourth and a five-run fifth.
“As the game got on, I felt like our guys were seeing the ball well,” Brinkerhoff said. “We really started barreling up the baseball. (Grand) made some phenomenal plays in the outfield. We knew that those were going to fall and (they) eventually did.”
Maybe most importantly, the Cowboys got through 6 ⅓ innings behind the strong pitching of sophomore starter Walker Baird.
“Moving forward with the pitch count, it’s huge,” Brinkerhoff said of how Baird’s pitching could pay dividends for Kanab later in the tournament.
The third-year head coach suspected Baird would play well enough to remain on the hill. “We just knew we were going to throw Walker and we were probably going to use him up with the pitch count,” Brinkerhoff said.
Baird’s coach praised him for his outing, giving up just one run. “He did a phenomenal job on the mound to hold that team to four or five hits there.”
Kanab’s reward is a matchup with Beaver after it beat Enterprise in the nightcap. The Cowboys lost to the Beavers twice earlier this season.
Thursday marked the rubber match between Beaver and Enterprise after the two schools split their pair of regular-season games.
The Beavers escaped the first inning unscathed after the Wolves wasted their best opportunity of the night with bases loaded and no outs. From there, the No. 2 seed picked up one run in each of the first, the fourth and the sixth innings.
Beaver, the highest seeded team left in the tournament, was propelled by stellar pitching from junior southpaw Davin Orton. Orton ultimately pitched to all but the final batter, giving up just two hits in the shutout victory — the first time Enterprise has been blanked all season.
Beaver and Kanab will face off Friday at BYU in the semifinals, with the first pitch scheduled for 4:30 p.m.
Playing in the consolation bracket tomorrow, Grand meets No. 7 Milford at 11 a.m. and will be followed by Enterprise against No. 5 South Sevier. The winners will face off later that evening.