DOUGLAS — After dominating their playoff-opening series, the Cochise Apaches are moving on to the next round.
Cochise, the Region 1 Tournament’s 4-seed, topped 1-seed Central Arizona 7-4 on Saturday in Coolidge to clinch the best of 3 series. The Apaches advance to this week’s Region 1 Championship series, where they’ll go on the road again, this time to Prescott, to face 2-seed Yavapai for a three-game set starting Thursday.
Although the Apaches dropped the first game of the series after a ninth-inning rally by Central, Cochise didn’t trail for 25 of the series’ 27 innings.
Central at one point was the highest ranked team in Arizona (No. 6 on the April 20 national poll), was the postseason tournament’s top seed, and had taken four out of five from Cochise in 2016 heading into Game 2. That mattered little to Cochise.
The Apaches lost a late lead in Game 1 and then trailed for just one inning in their wild 20-18 win in Friday’s Game 2.
Come Saturday’s Game 3, Luis Hidalgo led off the top of the third with a walk and Jamori Blash followed with getting hit by a pitch. That set up an RBI double from Cochise’s Jackson Overlund, a run-scoring single by Dominic Demarco, and a sacrifice fly from Adam De La Cruz, and Cochise led 3-0 and wouldn’t trail the rest of the way.
The Apaches kept it going the next inning as well. After Logan Bottrell led off the inning with a double, catcher Tag Baxter doubled him home and Jorge Duarte crossed home plate on a Central error to widen the lead. Baxter later scored himself as the Apaches strung together back-to-back three-run innings.
And after pitchers on both teams had a rough day on Friday, Cochise starter Juan Aguilera threw three shutout innings to lead off Saturday’s staff performance. Tyler Fallwell got hit for three runs in his one-plus inning of relief, but Jordon West came on for the final four-plus innings and allowed just one run on two hits while striking out four and walking none.
Baxter came up huge in the three-game series. The catcher went 5-for-10 with five runs scored, a home run, two doubles and nine RBIs. Overlund batted 4-for-12 with three runs, a home run, a double and four RBIs, and the team’s leadoff man, Bottrell, collected four hits and scored four runs.
Looking ahead, Cochise (36-23 overall) won three of four against Yavapai during the regular season, including splitting their February doubleheader in Prescott.
The team that emerges as the Region 1 champion will advance to the District playoff round, hosted by the Region 9 champion in Colorado. The District round also will include the Region 18 winner in the four-team bracket, with the winner qualifying for the NJCAA World Series in Grand Junction, Colo., later this month.