RENO GAZETTE-JOURNAL
POSTED: May 16, 2012
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: Bishop Gorman is the tournament favorite.
Yes, the Gaels enter this week’s 4A baseball state tournament as the team with the best shot at hoisting the hardware on Saturday. No surprise there.
It’s been eight years since the North won a 4A baseball state championship. Gorman, the country’s preseason No. 1 team now ranked No. 5 in the latest USA Today poll, is in search of its seventh straight state championship.
Do Reno High, the last North team to win it all back in 2004, and McQueen have a shot?
“To be honest, we’re embracing the challenge,” said McQueen coach Carlos Madrid, whose Lancers take on Gorman this afternoon at Peccole Park. “We know the past few years Vegas has owned this tournament. So, they’re going to come in confident. Maybe we can capitalize on that and upset someone if they’re overconfident.
“We know we have a tough challenge ahead of us. But we’re going to come in confident, too. Hopefully, I don’t end up eating my words.”
If Gorman claims the title, it would mark the second time in three years the Gaels swept the three major boys sports in one year. The football and basketball teams won their championships earlier this year by a combined 89 points.
Gorman coach Nick Day said before the season this year’s team might be the best the school has had. Better than the previous six that went a combined 230-23?
“Probably,” Day admitted of his team that features five Division-I signees.
The Lancers get first crack at Gorman, which had to come back through the losers’ bracket to win the Sunset Regional last week, as a result of taking second in the Northern Regional. McQueen won the Northern 4A regular-season title but lost twice to Reno last week.
Madrid will send ace Christian Stolo to the mound to face a team hitting .440 and averaging 12 runs per game.
“I have a lot of confidence in Christian, and our team plays very confidently when he’s on the mound,” Madrid said of his senior left-hander.
Stolo had a 2.26 ERA and 46 strikeouts in league play this season.
“I’m just going to go with the same game plan as usual,” Stolo said. “We’re expecting to compete with them. We know we can compete with anybody.
“This (state tournament) is what we’ve been thinking about since Little League. We’ve wanted it our whole high school careers.”
For Reno, which opens the tournament against Sunrise Region champion Coronado after claiming the Northern Region title and top seed last week, coach Pete Savage knows any road to the program’ssixth state championship will likely go through Gorman. But that is not where the Huskies’ focus lies.
“We have a lot of respect for Gorman and that program. But that’s not who we’re thinking about,” Savage said. “We’re focused on us. We don’t worry about anyone else. We’ve hammered home to the kids to execute against the pitch. We’re playing against the game. We have to execute against the pitch, whether you’re throwing it or facing it at the plate.”