The penultimate Tuesday of prep baseball’s regular season created slightly more anarchy than clarity.
Grants in District 5-4A avoided some of this tumult with a huge road win at St. Pius. Hope Christian earned an important victory over 6-4A-leading Albuquerque Academy. District 1-5A continues to be a headache to predict, and Tuesday’s results further fueled the confusion.
Cibola’s 10-7, come-from-behind upset win over No. 1-ranked Piedra Vista on the West Side was the Cougars’ second consecutive victory over Class 5A’s top-ranked team. They beat the previous No. 1, Cleveland, last Friday.
All this is even more surprising when you consider that these are Cibola’s only two league wins.
“It has been … a rollercoaster of a season,” Cougars coach Robert Puentes said. “We knew we had a good team, I just don’t think we lived up to our expectations to this point.”
The unpredictable Cougars — who need all the wins they can stack just to ensure they qualify for the playoffs — started Tuesday tied for last place in the district. But they’ve shown flashes of good baseball; this team also has nondistrict victories over fourth-ranked La Cueva and sixth-ranked Eldorado this season.
Senior catcher Isaac Brito belted a pair of two-run home runs for Cibola on Tuesday.
Cibola (10-13, 2-5 in 1-5A) trailed 5-1 headed to the bottom of the fourth. It later scored three in the bottom of the fifth, sparked by Brito’s first homer which tied the Panthers (20-3, 5-2) at 5-all. The Cougars then scored five in the bottom of the sixth, highlighted by Tyler Wright’s two-RBI double and Brito’s second bomb of the day, over the left-field fence.
“That has been the discussion the last week and a half,” Puentes said, “that we need to do something with these last five games. That’s the nightmare of our district. But in our situation, it also provides us with some golden opportunities. We’ll see if we can play our way in.”
Piedra Vista’s loss allowed third-ranked Rio Rancho (19-4, 6-1) to take over solo first place in 1-5A. The Rams pounded Volcano Vista 18-3 in six innings on Tuesday.
Cleveland (21-2, 5-2) won big, 16-10 at Farmington on Tuesday. Anthony Del Angel hit a fourth-inning grand slam for the Storm who had 20 hits.
In 4A action Tuesday, No. 8-ranked Grants rolled into Albuquerque and beat No. 7 St. Pius 4-2, and the Pirates (15-8, 6-0), who have won 10 games in a row, all but clinched the District 5-4A title .
Senior Estevan Barela was outstanding for the Pirates, pitching a complete-game three-hitter; both the runs he gave up to the Sartans (11-12, 3-3) were unearned.
“He pitched amazing,” Grants coach Mike Furbee said.
And he was clutch. St. Pius loaded the bases with nobody out in the fifth in a game that was then 2-1 for Grants, and escaped having just given up one game-tying run on a double play.
The Pirates, whose lineup is comprised mostly of underclassmen (just two seniors), broke that 2-2 tie in the top of the sixth with a pair of runs.
The go-ahead run scored on a passed ball. Barela added an RBI single right on top of that to plate Zeth Villasana for a 4-2 lead.
“We still do things to kind of hurt ourselves,” Furbee said of his young group, “but we’re able to work through them and that is a huge part (of why we’ve won 10 in a row).”
In another important 4A matchup Tuesday, fourth-ranked Albuquerque Academy had a chance to lock up the 6-4A title, but the Chargers’ 8-5 loss to No. 6-ranked Hope Christian will delay Academy’s plans.
“That was important to us,” Huskies coach Fernando Salinas said. “We had been up and down all season … today was a good win for us, it really was.”