LEAGUE CITY — The Clear Creek Wildcats had one more rally left in them Saturday night. In the end, it came up one run short.
District rival Brazoswood defeated the Wildcats, 8-7, in a one-game Region III-5A quarterfinal playoff at Clear Creek High School.
Creek (18-11) rallied from six runs down in the sixth, to pull within one in the bottom of the seventh. However, with the bases loaded and no outs, Brazoswood’s Anthony McIntyre struck out the final three Creek batters, ending the Wildcats’ season.
The Wildcats were nearly done in early due to poor defense by its infield. They committed four errors in the first three innings (six for the game) as the Buccaneers took a 4-0 lead off Creek ace Shawn Blackwell.
Creek cut the deficit in half in the third inning on consecutive RBI-doubles by Greg Olson and Dylan McGregor.
However, another error and three RBI-singles led to another big inning for Brazoswood (30-2) in the fifth. The Bucs scored four runs in the inning to go up 8-2. That chased Blackwell, who gave up eight hits and six earned runs.
Creek started to gain some momentum in the sixth when Austin Robson hit a two-run double to cut the Brazoswood lead to 8-4.
Then in the seventh, the Wildcats first six batters reached bases on three hits and three walks (two intentional). Reed Gordy had a big two-run double and then Hunter Seele scored on a wild pitch to bring Creek within one with no outs.
Brazoswood opted to walk Robson to load the bases. From there, McIntyre found his groove. He struck out C.J. McElroy, Steve Collins and Ethan Hughes to end the game and put Brazos-wood into the regional semifinals.
The Bucs advance to face top-ranked Bellaire next week. Three of Creek’s 11 loses this season came at the hands of Brazoswood.
