The Trojans finished the season as the fourth place seed and started the playoffs against Sunrise League’s first place seed, Boulder City (21-9 overall, 14-0 Sunrise League) on Tuesday. Pahrump Valley lost to the Eagles, 10-0.
Coming off a loss to the Sunset League’s first place seed, Faith Lutheran, on Thursday 10-0, Trojans skipper, Brian Hayes knew his Trojans (21-11-1, 8-6) had a hard road ahead going into the playoffs.
Prior to the game Hayes said his team had to step it up because of some injuries.
“We are battling a little bit of adversity now with two starters out for the season (Aaron Fuentes and Tyler Greene) and another starter out for grades,” the coach said. “We have been carried all year by Josh Mortensen, Dylan Ault, Carlos Rivera and Tyler Greene and will need them to continue to shoulder the load.”
The two teams were close in stats and in earlier action Boulder City beat the Trojans, 4-2.
Prior to the game, Boulder City had team batting average of .377 to Pahrump’s .303, but Pahrump had a slightly better earned run average of 3.56 to the Eagles’, 3.97.
Mortensen, who has one of the best ERAs (2.58) on the staff, took the mound for the Trojans. The senior is a veteran and also a leading run producer for his team and he had the full confidence of his coach to get the job done.
“We expect to throw Josh, and if we play solid defense and get some timely hitting we expect to win,” Hayes said on Monday.
Hayes said that in order to win his team had to hit and be aggressive and this is something his team has done all year long.
“Our recipe for success is simple: allow 5 or less runs and score 7 or more. We are 18-3 this year when we allow less than 5 runs and 16-1 when we score 7-plus runs,” the coach said.