Lukoshus' 79 pitches enough to shutout Crown Point 2-0 to win 4A Northern Regional title, will face Penn in Semistate

A USA-365.com Special Report by Mark Smith

6-10-2006

Monday, June 5, 2006 - 76 degrees at 4A Regionnal Championship at Munster

WP - Tim Lukoshus (6-1) 7Ks, 0 walks, CG, 79 pitches
LP - Matt Jansen (7-3)  8Ks, 4 walks, 93 pitches

CROWN POINT (22-9)
Matt Ernest (SS) 2 singles

Munster (22-10)
John Bugjaski (RF) 2 walks
Andrew Bilse (CF) Double, walk
Billy Stuart (LF) Single, RBI
Alex Toth (DH) Double, RBI

1. Highland Sectional
Game 1 – Lowell 5, Highland 0.
Game 2 – Lake Central 12, East Chicago 1 (6 innings).
Game 3 – Lake Central 5, Lowell 2.
Game 4 – Munster 13, Gary West Side 0 (5 innings).
Championship – Munster 6, Lake Central  4
 
2. Valparaiso Sectional
Game 1 – Chesterton 4, Hobart 3.
Game 2 – Merrillville 9, Portage 4.
Game 3 – Merrillville 6, Chesterton 2.
Game 4 – Crown Point. 10, Valparaiso 0 (5 innings).
Crown Point 5, Merrillville 2
 
3. South Bend Clay Sectional
Game 1 – LaPorte 9, (SB) Washington 5.
Game 2 – South Bend Clay 5, Michigan City 2.
Game 3 – LaPorte 6, (SB) Clay 2.
Game 4 – South Bend Riley 8, South Bend Adams 2.
Championship – LaPorte 11, (SB) Riley 2

 4. Elkhart Memorial Sectional (6 teams) 
Game 1 – Elkhart Central 5, Goshen 2.
Game 2 – Penn 13, Mishawaka 4.
Game 3 – Penn 4, Elkhart Central 2.
Game 4 – Concord 8, Elkhart Memorial 2.
Championship – Penn 11, Concord 7
 
5. Carroll (Fort Wayne) Sectional
Game 1 – Columbia City 11, DeKalb 4.
Game 2 – Warsaw 3, East Noble 2.
Game 3 – Columbia City 4, (Allen Co.) Carroll  3 (8 innings).
Championship – Warsaw 1, Columbia City 0.
 
6. Fort Wayne Snider Sectional  
Game 1 – (FW) Northrop 16, (FW) South Side 0 (5 innings).
Game 2 – Homestead 2, Huntington North 1.
Game 3 – Homestead 4, (FW) Northrop 1.
Game 4 – (FW) Snider 9, (FW) North Side 1.
Championship – (FW) Snider 3, Homestead 0.

7. Lafayette Jefferson Sectional  
Game 1 – Logansport 2, Lafayette Jefferson 1.
Game 2 – Harrison (West Lafayette) 6, McCutcheon 2.
Game 3 – Harrison (West Lafayette) 11, Logansport 7.
Game 4 – Kokomo 14, Marion 4.
Championship – Harrison (West Lafayette) 8, Kokomo 7.

8. Ben Davis Sectional (6 teams) 
Game 1 – Zionsville 13, Avon 2.
Game 2 – Ben Davis 17, Indianapolis Northwest 6.
Game 3 – Zionsville 7, Ben Davis 6 (9 innings).
Game 4 – Brownsburg 10, Pike 0 (6 innings).
Championship – Zionsville 6, Brownsburg 4.

Class 4A Northern Regionals
6-5 (Mon) Munster 2, CROWN POINT 0
6-6 (Tu) Penn (26-5) 15, LaPorte (26-7) 4 (5-innings)
6-6 (Tu) Fort Wayne Snider (23-6) 10, Warsaw (17-10) 1
6-6 (Tu)  Zionsville (21-8) 10, (West Lafayette) Harrison (13-18) 2 

Class 4A Lafayette Semistate
Game 1 – Penn (26-5) vs. Munster (22-10). PPD to Mon, 11 am
Game 2 – Zionsville (21-8) vs. Fort Wayne Snider (23-6). PPD to Mon, 1 pm
Championship – Game 1 winner vs. Game 2 winner. PPD to Mon, 7:30 pm

MUNSTER (6-5-2006)  A lot of times you have a lot of excuses for losing and some of them may even be half-justified.  For Crown Point, playing the Monday night 4A Regional championship game at Munster, this was not one of those times.

The Bulldogs had ace starter and Division I recruit Matt Jansen pitching on three days rest after just a five-inning stint in a 10-0 sectional win over Valparaiso.  The Mustangs truthfully didn't have either senior right-hander Mike Sealy or junior Chris Winterhaler, the duo that got the Mustangs past Lake Central in the Highland Sectional.  Crown Point came in with a 10-game winning streak, a stretch where they outscored 10 victims (including 20-game winners Merrillville, LaPorte and Elkhart Memorial) by a combined score of 88-25.

It was over in 90 minutes.  Senior Munster right-hander Tim Lukoshus handcuffed CP by mixing speeds and pitch location.  For the Bulldogs, it was hard to understand it, but for Munster it was just the way they planned it.  The Mustangs moved on to the semistate with their second consecutive upset, a 2-0 blanking of Crown Point.

The Bulldogs never got started and the key to the game was Munster's choice of pitchers.  Munster could have gone with right-hander Jake Ernd (4-1), who had more velocity than Lukoshus, but not the control.

Crown Point (22-9) only had two runners on base in the sixth inning when Tim Mummery and Matt Ernest lined one out singles to centerfield.  The Bulldogs had No. 3 hitter Chris Saroff due up and Mustangs coach Bob Shinkan walked out to the mound.

"I just knew that if we got to this point and faced a team like this," said Munster coach Bob Shinkan, "that he was the perfect choice.  He would keep them off balance.  I almost yanked him in the sixth inning when he gave up those two singles in a row, but I asked the catcher (Pete Jurich) and he just said that Timmy just grooved a couple. I told him that he'd pitched a great game and I wanted him to finish.  He served up a perfect ground ball to (shortstop Mike) Sealy for a double play.  I really did not want to take him out of the game.  What a great, great effort."

Crown Point's Jansen gave up back-to-back line drive doubles to Andrew Bilse and Alex Toth with one out in the second inning.  In the sixth, Jansen fumbled a sacrifice bunt for an error in front of Pete Jurich's RBI soft line drive single to right.  Those were the only Munster hits of the game, but the Mustangs beat Lake Central 6-4 in the Highland Sectional title game with only four hits.

Here's a team that wins very quietly.

"What did we get?" asked Shinkan.  "Three hits?  That's what we've been doing all season.  When you look at our offensive stats and the record we have, nobody's going to be scared of us.  But we win on pitching and defense and that's how you win championships."

Cliches aside, you can't win very often with just three or four hits.  Just ask Crown Point, which swung early in the count most of the night and made Lukoshus' job easier than it should have been.  To be fair, Lukoshus appeared to outsmart CP hitters guessing correctly when to slip the first strike over and throwing quality, late-moving junk out of the strike zone.

"Their pitcher hit his spots," said CP coach Steve Strayer, completing his fourth year as the Bulldogs coach.  "He did a great job.  Above and beyond this game, we went through a tough stretch this season where we fought to come back and won the sectional title which was a great accomplishment.  Then we had to come back in a couple of days and play a regional championship so quick.  It's hard when we had that feeling of satisfaction to come back with the fire that we had.  We didn't have it tonight.  Not to take anything away from them.  But I think here was a letdown.  We know Munster's always a good team.  I don't think we were overlooking them.  But deep down inside I don't think we had the fire that we needed to get the job done tonight."

A crowd of over 300 fans sat on their hands to some extent as the two pitchers dominated the game on a perfect spring night.  Munster's graduation was Sunday so the home crowd was in a holiday mood.  CP had problems earlier in the year with playing the count and that resurfaced on this night as almost every batter swung at the first or second pitch.

"But we took some pitches we shouldn't have taken," said assistant coach Rick Florkiewicz.  

"We took some strikes," Strayer agreed.  "We looked at some pitches early we should have swung at."

Leadoff man Tim Mummery epitomized CP's night when he took three balls to start the game and then took three strikes.  CP's four seniors, Nick Ullman, Matt Jansen, Tommy Wise and Adam Kennedy leave a very strong team for 2007, but not until after they helped bail out this team that was lost at mid season with a 12-8 record.

"We were down in the middle of the season," said Strayer.  "It was really low.  At the Andrean game, when we got beat, the Andrean fans were saying things and when we got on the bus, you could see it on their faces there was some hurt there.  We came back and fought and fought to earn the sectional and there was some satisfaction there."

We weren't horrible tonight, but we weren't quite there.  We were going to have to hit the ball where he was going to throw it.  He was not going to give us a pitch down the middle."

REGIONAL NOTES:  This is the reverse score of the 2005 4A Regional championship game won 2-0 by Crown Point over Munster at Crown Point.  In that game Matt Jansen also pitched against Tim Lukoshus, although Paul Malayter started for Munster one year ago.

Ironically, last year's game was also postponed by CP's Tuesday night graduation.  It was played on a Wednesday night.  Crown Point wanted to play Monday instead of Wednesday and Mustang coach Bob Shinkan agreed.

"The two ADs got together after we both won the sectional game," said Shinkan late Monday. "I had forgotten that their graduation is always Tuesday.  It was between Monday and Wednesday and Crown Point made the comment that when they won last year, they had less time to prepare for Saturday.  So, Monday would be a better choice.  We just made the choice to go Monday and looking at the weather reports (rain was scheduled for Tuesday afternoon), I think we may have made a great choice."
    
This time, Crown Point did not get a runner past second base against Lukoshus, who threw just 79 pitches and had only one three ball count, on Tim Mummery, who led off the game and took a 3-2 pitch strike.   CP's Jansen allowed only one hit, an opposite field single by Billy Stuart, after the second inning.

Since a May 2 loss 13-2 to Andrean, Munster has now won 11 of 13 games.  Crown Point had a 10-game winning streak broken.  Neither coach is a fan of the mid-week regional, but Shinkan has given up fighting it.

"I'm a traditionalist," he said.  "But, you now what?  Just tell me when I'm going to play.  Because I'm not going to change things.  Just tell me where to show up."

The CP-Munster game was the only regional title game in the state that was played on Monday night.