LEXINGTON, Ohio — Kevin Morrow isn’t ready to order championship t-shirts just yet, but Lexington’s coach didn’t need to be reminded of the significance of Thursday’s 8-3 win over Madison.
The victory vaulted the Minutemen into sole possession of first place in the chase for the Ohio Cardinal Conference championship with two conference games to play. A split with Wooster next week and Lex (14-8, 10-2) will have at least a share of the title.
“There is still a lot of work to do,” Morrow said after the Minutemen completed the home-and-home sweep of the defending conference champ. “We’ve got two games against a very good Wooster team coming up, but I like where we’re sitting.”
After being postponed Tuesday because of rain, the game was resumed in the top of the second inning with Lexington leading 1-0. The Minutemen didn’t waste any time, scoring four runs in the bottom of the third. Lex loaded the bases before Nick Adams belted a two-out three-run double to right, scoring Joey Vore, Evan Lee and Josh Verspoor.
“There were two critical plays in the game and that was one of them,” Madison coach Doug Rickert said. “The other was in the fifth when we scored our runs.”
The Rams (13-12, 9-3) scored all three of their runs in the third, but the inning could have been bigger. Zane Harris plated Madison’s first run with a sacrifice fly before Kyle Galco was hit by a pitch with the bases loaded to make it 5-2. Alec Keen then lifted a fly ball to shallow center that would have gone for a run-scoring single were it not for the heady play of Adams. The senior scooped up the ball and fired a strike to third to retire Madison’s Josh Smith, who was hung up between second and third while waiting to see if the ball would drop.
“We were able to limit the damage,” Morrow said. “It was a heads-up play.”
Adding on: Lexington answered with three runs in the home half of the fifth. Andrew Iten had a two-run single.
“They didn’t hit the ball real hard,” Rickert said. “I thought we hit the ball harder than they did, but we hit it right at people.”
Closing the door: Lee, Lexington’s Kent State-bound senior, came on in relief for the second night in a row. The hard-throwing right-hander retired all six batters he faced in two innings of relief a day after earning the save in Lexington’s 7-3 win at Madison.
“He’s not only a great player, he is a great leader for them,” Rickert said of Lee. “I went up to him after the game and told him it has been an honor to coach against him. He’s the best player in our league. He’ll get my vote.”
No rest: Lexington is at Berlin Hiland today and will host Ontario on Saturday and Shelby on Monday before next week’s scheduled conference games against Wooster. Lex will host Clyde in a Division II sectional final Thursday.
“The Wooster games will have to be moved, because they have a tournament game Tuesday,” Morrow said. “Still, we’ve got a busy week coming up and it is an important week for us.”
Madison is at Toledo Whitmer on Tuesday for a Division I sectional championship game.
