The No. 1 Maria Carrillo baseball team raised its winning streak to 15, with a 4-1 non-league win over Vintage. Jared Brazis pitched a complete game three hitter. Clayton Andrews had three hits, including a double and scored two runs.
Maria Carrillo is 18-2 on the season. The 18 wins are as many as they have had in each of the last two seasons , which is the most since 2003 when they went 22-7 and won the second of two straight NCS championships. They will go for win number 19 and resume their run at the NBL championship when they go to Ukiah on Wednesday.
Maria Carrillo almost got some double good news as far as getting a higher seed for the NCS playoffs is concerned. Based on the power rankings Maria Carrillo is No. 4 in Division 2. One of the teams ahead of them is four time Division champion Campolindo, who was in Sonoma County on Monday for a game against Casa Grande.
In trying to help Maria Carrillo, and more importantly themselves in the seedings, Casa Grande scored two runs in the first, but couldn’t score again. Campolindo scored the game winner in the seventh to take a 3-2 win.
Eric Parnow went six innings for Casa Grande, giving up two earned runs. The game was tied 2-2 from the second inning until the seventh.
Campolindo is 16-3 on the season and in the power rankings is No. 2 in Division 2. Going into Monday’s action, Montgomery is No. 6, Casa Grande No. 7 and Cardinal Newman is No. 10.
The teams get back to the North Bay League race on Wednesday. Maria Carrillo has a two game lead over No. 4 (YSN Ranking) Montgomery with four games left. Both teams are on the road with Maria Carrillo at Ukiah and Montgomery at Windsor.
Casa Grande and No. 6 Cardinal Newman are tied for third place. Casa Grande is at Santa Rosa, while Cardinal Newman travels to Rancho Cotate.
There is a NBL post season tournament in baseball and the four teams are almost set. The only team that could spoil the four team party that has controlled the NBL is Rancho Cotate. They would need to go 4-0 and hope Cardinal Newman or Casa Grande losses all four.
All the other races resume on Tuesday. Most of the leagues are on a race changing upset alert.
One that isn’t is the NCL II race with No. 9 St. Vincent traveling to No. 10 Tomales. St. Vincent has a one game lead over Tomales and Rincon Valley Christian.
The NCL I Softball race will have its showdown game on Wednesday when No. 4 Cloverdale travel to No. 6 Clear Lake. This game is a make-up and is the first of two games between the teams. The second is the last regular season game on May 13th in Cloverdale.
Both have games on Tuesday. Clear Lake is at St. Helena and is a big favorite in the game. Meanwhile Cloverdale hosts Lower Lake, a team that has been in the YSN365.com rankings earlier this season. Lower Lake has three league losses by a combined five runs. In the first meeting with Cloverdale, they had a 5-3 lead going to the seventh, before losing 7-5.
My email address is jacpasquini@comcast.net