Rivals Hamilton, Chandler to meet for 6A baseball crown for first time

For the first time in the rivals' storied sports history, Chandler and Hamilton will be meeting for the 6A state baseball championship.

These teams are fierce rivals on the football field.

Two years ago, Chandler held off Hamilton to win the Open Division championship.

Now, it's time for the baseball teams to meet in the biggest game of the year on Tuesday night at Tempe Diablo Stadium following the 4 p.m., 5A state championship matchup between Nogales and Buckeye Verrado.

Hamilton got there in the most improbable way, losing two games in the double-elimination tournament, but given life Wednesday after the Arizona Interscholastic Association ruled that Queen Creek had to forfeit its 2-1 Tuesday night win over Hamilton for using an illegal pitcher in the seventh inning.

Hamilton has seized the moment, beating Scottsdale Chaparral on back to back days — 10-2 Friday and 3-1 on Saturday night — to get to the final for the 10th time. The Huskies are going after their eighth state championship under coach Mike Woods.

But Tuesday, Hamilton will be without the Premier Region Player of the Year.

First baseman Josh Tiedemann, who pitched the first four innings Saturday, giving up one run, was ejected from the game after the fourth for arguing with an umpire during an at-bat, Woods said.

He must serve an automatic next-game suspension, per AIA rules.

Jeremy Jones pitched a scoreless final three frames for the Huskies.

They were led at the plate by Ryan Kucherak's two-run homer in the first inning. Cooper Bass added an RBI double in the fifth.

Chandler is going after its first state baseball title since 1970 after eliminating Perry 11-2 early in the day Saturday at Hohokam Stadium.

Tears to cheers, Hamilton seizes opportunity

They cried on Tempe Diablo Stadium's field Tuesday.

Tears turned to cheers Friday, when No. 1 Chandler Hamilton, given life in the double-elimination 6A baseball tournament by Queen Creek's forfeiture, beat Scottsdale Chaparral 10-2 in the semifinal at Mesa's Hohokam Stadium.

The Huskies broke open a 2-2 game with two runs in the sixth inning and six more in the seventh to force a win-and-go-to-the-state-championship game on Saturday night at 6:30 at Hohokam.

In the later semifinal, No. 10 Gilbert Perry forced No. 6 Chandler to return Saturday with a 4-3 victory. They'll meet again at 4 p.m., to determine who moves onto Tuesday's 7 p.m. championship at Tempe Diablo Stadium.

"We all had our emotions go through," said Hamilton senior right-hander Logan Saloman, who improved to 11-0, giving up five hits and one earned run in six innings of work. "We all cried and we all hugged each other."

From total dejection, losing 2-1 to Queen Creek on Tuesday, figuring their season was over, the Huskies were informed late Wednesday afternoon that Queen Creek had to forfeit the contest due to using an illegal pitcher, Sebastian Tomerlin, in the seventh inning to work out of a jam.

That gave Hamilton another chance to advance. Some would say a third chance, after having lost to Chaparral 5-0 earlier in the tournament. But it's an opening that a powerful Huskies lineup and deep pitching staff will seize. With no regrets.

Queen Creek coach Mikel Moreno was livid after finding out that his team would have to forfeit, because Tomerlin had thrown 64 pitches, according to Chaparral's GameChanger, and his team's count of 55 was thrown out, because it didn't get registered on one of the two devices that the AIA accepts: GameChanger or the AIA pitch-count document.

Had he thrown fewer than 60 pitches last Saturday in the loss to Chaparral in relief, Tomerlin would have been good to pitch Tuesday. With more than 60 pitches officially counted against Tomerlin, he would have needed one more day of rest before he could pitch again.

Moreno said on Wednesday he felt his team earned the right to play Chaparral again by virtue of its win on the field, and that "if Hamilton wants to win on a technicality, they got us on a technicality."

"I don't want to go there," Hamilton coach Mike Woods said after Friday's win. "I don't know what we did wrong. My question is, 'What did we do wrong?' I'll just leave it at that."

Riding the emotions of the week, Woods said, "I didn't know how the kids were going to respond."

"At practice, we talked about the crazy situation that we're in," Woods said. "They seemed pretty locked in. I walked away from practice yesterday feeling pretty good about it.

"Today we came out and played with a purpose."

Woods said he hasn't decided on who will start in Saturday's 6:30 p.m., elimination game against Chaparral, the No. 8 seed that lost its first game of the tournament. But he's got options, including Premier Region Player of the Year Josh Tiedemann, a junior first baseman, who pitched a complete-game win in the Boras Classic earlier in the season.

For Chaparral, coach Troy Gerlach will figure out who to come back with after using his ace, Andrew Carroll, for the second time against Hamilton. Carroll pitched well again but not like he did on May 3 in a 5-0 win over Hamilton.

Carroll wasn't helped Friday by errors in the field. Only one of the four runs Hamilton scored off of Carroll in his six innings were earned.

Zach Wadas punched across the go-ahead run with a two-out, two-strike double in the sixth. An error on a liner to second scored another run for Hamilton, giving the Huskies a 4-2 lead into the seventh.

Then, the Huskies took advantage of a new Chaparral pitcher to start the seventh and scored six runs on six hits. Tiedemann and Ryan Kucherak started the seventh with back-to-back triples.

Prince DeBoskie, Cooper Bass, Liam Wilson and Gavin Turley each had RBI hits and Roch Cholowsky drove in another run with a sacrifice fly.

But it was Wadas' big hit in the sixth that was key.

"I was just trying to stay on top of the ball and hit a line drive," Wadas said. "I just wanted to do my job."

Gerlach said the last thing he wanted in the middle of the week was to be caught in the middle of the pitch-count controversy.

Because the AIA rejected Queen Creek's pitch count on Tomerlin, it used Chaparral's count, because it was inputted by GameChanger.

"I tell you, the whole thing has been crazy," Gerlach said. "That's just what we had (for the pitch count). I feel bad for Queen Creek. It's just a bad situation. It is what it is. We're in a situation where they've got to beat us twice."

Wadas knows that Hamilton is wearing the black hat the rest of the tournament with social media going abuzz after Wednesday's ruling.

"There were mixed emotions when we started getting all of the hate," Wadas said. "But I just put my head down and decided I can't worry about that at the end of the day."

In Perry's win over Chandler, starter Stephen Hernandez was magnificent through five innings, shutting out the Wolves, before allowing three runs in the sixth. Perry had built a 4-0 lead before the Wolves fought back.

Braeden Romero and Nikolas Miller came on in relief to get the final six outs to preserve the win.

Chandler had only three hits in the game, two of those against Hernandez.

"Stephen had one of the gutsiest pitching performance I have ever seen," Perry coach Damien Tippett said. "He really grinded through five innings at less than 100%."

To suggest human-interest story ideas and other news, reach Obert at richard.obert@arizonarepublic.com or 602-316-8827. Follow him on Twitter @azc_obert.

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This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Rivals Hamilton, Chandler to meet for 6A baseball crown for first time