Above: Downers Grove North senior right-hander Brett Pyburn delivers during the Trojans’ 6-0 shutout of Neuqua Valley on May 30, 2015.
Neuqua Valley coach Robin Renner knew the cold, hard truth.
A 7-6 stretch entering the title game of its own regional on Saturday may have created some doubts as to what his team could be capable of, yet everything still remained in front of it.
In a flash, the designs of staking claim to the program’s fifth straight regional title and 10th overall disappeared because of one simple reason: Downers Grove North senior right-hander Brett Pyburn.
Pyburn scattered three hits and allowed the fourth-seeded Wildcats just four base runners in the course of tossing a 6-0 complete-game shutout for the fifth-seeded Trojans and claim the Class 4A Neuqua Valley Regional.
“He was rock-solid on the mound,” Renner said of Pyburn, who struck out 11 in leading the Trojans (24-12) to their first regional title since 2013. “He was just (throwing) three pitches for strikes and locating everything. I don’t how many times we struck out, but we struck out looking nine times, I believe. That’s not like us and it was certainly a shock to see.”
From the start, Pyburn put the Wildcats (25-11) on notice that it wasn’t going to be their day.
Given a 1-0 lead to work with right out of the gate, Pyburn struck out the side in the bottom of the first to set the tone for the entire game.
Pyburn retired the first 10 hitters he saw and didn’t surrender a hit until a one-out single from Nick Hilgemann in the bottom of the fourth.
“(Pyburn) was definitely on top of his game,” Hilgemann said. “He had all of his pitches working. It took us, I think, a 1/3 go-ahead through the lineup to get on top of his stuff and then we just (had to battle). They got on top early in the game, so we were trying to battle back the entire game. We just keep fighting until the end.”
The fourth-inning single to Hilgemann and back-to-back one-out singles in the fifth from Alex DiFranco and Kevin Ringlein were the only hits Pyburn permitted the Wildcats.
After Ringlein singled DiFranco to third to put runners on the corners for Neuqua Valley with one out in the fifth, Pyburn bore down by striking out both Will Drake and Nolan Hicks to get out of the inning.
“Honestly, I felt really great,” Pyburn said. “I wanted to establish my fastball early in the counts and then get them out with my out pitch, which is my curveball. I don’t know. Everything just seemed to fall into place.”
Dallton Baran’s two-out single up the middle following a Myles Fairley double plated a run for the Trojans off Wildcats’ starter Connor Rektorski in the first inning.
A two-run third and three-run third followed for Downers Grove North to give Pyburn more support, but to go right to the mound in the first with a lead made all the difference.
“(It gave me) tons (of confidence),” Pyburn said. “Big weight off my shoulders, definitely.”
Rektorski (4-2) gave up six runs, four earned, on nine hits while striking out one in 4 1/3 innings for the Wildcats before Danny Wagner took over and finished up the last 2 2/3 innings.
The 18-4 start and an 11-game winning streak entering its three-game series with Waubonsie Valley on May 5 raised expectations that another long postseason run could be in the cards for Neuqua Valley.
But finishing the season’s last 14 games at just 7-7 is as perplexing as customary as 25-win seasons have become for the program, a benchmark it has reached five of the last seven years.
“No, it’s not (like Neuqua Valley),” Renner said of the season’s final stretch. “That’s true. We talked about it in the dugout that we were a better team a month ago, for whatever reason. I don’t know. We were right in the middle of (the conference race). … We were rock-solid on the mound, defensively, offensively. We just didn’t play our best baseball at the end like we had always hoped.”
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