No. 9 BC Lakeview outslugs Okemos, 11

Okemos picked a bad time to run into a hot team.

The Wolves, on a roll themselves with 23 wins and a CAAC Blue runner-up finish, ran into an experienced, battle-tested squad playing some of its best baseball of the season.

No. 9-ranked Battle Creek Lakeview defeated Okemos, 11-2, in a Division 1 regional semifinal at DeWitt High School on Wednesday. Lakeview (34-6), which reached the state semifinals last spring, advances to play Livonia Franklin (21-9) in a regional final at 10 a.m. Saturday at Novi.

The Wolves end the year at 23-6-1.

"Lakeview is a great club, they earned it and they deserved the win," Okemos coach Raul Presas said. "We lost to a good team today and somebody has to lose and it was our turn to do that.

"But 23-6-1 is nothing to be disappointed about. I can't say enough about our seniors and the leadership they provided. We are going to miss them. This was a special group this year."

Trailing 1-0 early, Lakeview's Cade Oxley set the tone for the rest of the game in the second inning, when he hit a deep two-run home run over the left field fence to give Lakeview a lead it would never give up as the Spartans advance to the regional finals for the second year in a row.

"That's my first home run of the year," Oxley said. "I haven't hit one in about 10 years. Last time was probably 12-U, been a long time. The guys were excited to see that one go, got us some momentum, got us hyped out of our minds.

"When I hit it, it was like, 'Whoa, that felt good.' That was the best at-bat of my life."

Lakeview coach Kyle Kracht has been used to seeing his team score early lately, but when the Spartans failed to get a hit or a run in the first inning against a quality Okemos team, he was wondering what kind of day this was going to be.

But he didn't have to wait long.

"The hope was, let's score early like we have been doing and then we go out in the first inning and we get three straight pop-ups. Then they score early. So their confidence was up and ours could've been down," Kracht said. "But then Cade hit that big, big, big home run, and it was a no-doubter, and that was a huge momentum swing."

Lakeview added a run in the second inning on an RBI single by Zach Kucharczyk and the Spartans were up 3-1.

That lead held up through the first three innings as the Spartans' starter Jackson Haywood had held Okemos hitless through three frames, with the only run coming as the Wolves' Caleb Bonemer came home on a passed ball in the first.

Okemos would get the bats going in the fourth with three hits as Dominic Eastman added an RBI single to cut the lead to 3-2.

But the Okemos pitching staff would struggle from there, as Lakeview would add four runs in the fifth. The Spartans took a 4-2 lead on an RBI single by Malachi Goss, then padded their lead on back-to-back bases-loaded walks and a bases-loaded sacrifice fly by Keegan Hutchinson for a 7-2 advantage.

For the game, Okemos needed five pitchers as Lakeview put together 14 hits.

"The thing I was a little bit disappointed with is we didn't come out hitting on all cylinders on the mound," Presas said. "And that's been a staple of our team all year long, and we just didn't get it done today. That's not a criticism of any of the guys I threw out there today, but we just didn't get it done on the bump today."

With Jacob Kucharczyk coming in to pitch for Lakeview in the fifth, he held Okemos scoreless the rest of the way. The Spartans then tacked on four runs in the seventh.

"The nice part about this group, is that they have played a lot of baseball and they are used to playing at a high level," Kracht said. "They knew they would have to step it up today because they were playing a team in Okemos that was a better team than we have seen so far in the tournament. And now, we get to play another day and we get to continue to go to practice. That's what this group wants. They aren't looking forward to summer break. They just want to keep playing baseball and to keep winning."