Knoch defeats Abington Heights to win AAA baseball state championship – Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — A rain shower briefly delayed the PIAA Class AAA championship Friday in the sixth inning. Not long after the tarp was pulled off the field, lightning struck and Knoch got just the jolt it needed.

Knoch got four hits and two runs with two outs in the bottom of the sixth, and the two-out lightning gave the Knights a state championship.

Knoch defeated Abington Heights, 7-5, at Penn State’s Medlar Field at Lubrano Park. The victory made the Knights the first PIAA Class AAA champion from the WPIAL since Pine-Richland in 2006. This from a team that had won only one postseason game before this season.

“Unbelievable. That’s all I can say. This is unbelievable,” Knoch center fielder Dom Bucko said.

Bucko, a sophomore and leadoff hitter, played a big role in the two-out lightning. He basically listened to senior shortstop Chris Law, who pretty much said, “How ’bout a hit, Bucko?”

With the score tied, 5-5, Bucko came to the plate with two outs and the bases empty.

“We’ve been that one-two punch all year,” Law said. “I really said to [Bucko] before he went up, ‘You’re getting a triple, and then I’m coming up to hit you in.’”

Just call it Bucko ball. Bucko smacked a deep fly ball to right that turned into a triple, and Law followed by hitting a two-strike pitch up the middle for the go-ahead run. Law then stole second and scored on Cole Shinsky’s single to make it 7-5. Jordan Kowalski added another single before Abington Heights ended the quick storm.

“We have scored a lot of runs this year with two outs,” Knoch coach George Bradley said.

Shinsky, Knoch’s fine junior left-handed pitcher, made the two-run lead stand up and the win made Shinsky look like a perfect 10. Although it wasn’t one of his best performances, he finished the season with a 10-0 record.

Shinsky came into the game allowing only five runs in 24⅔ postseason innings. But Abington Heights (18-4) got to him for five runs and eight hits. Shinsky walked three, struck out three and hit three batters. He said he had trouble getting his arm loose for the second consecutive start.

“Since he wasn’t having his best day, we had to come through for him,” Law said.

Abington Heights scored two runs in the second and three more in the fourth to tie the score, 5-5. Seven of the Comets’ hits came in the first four innings.

“I thought [Shinsky] was a little tentative in the beginning, and he and I talked,” Bradley said. “It was about the fourth inning that I said, ‘Look, either you’re going to compete or I’ll find someone else who will.’”

Shinsky’s fastball was much more effective in the final three innings, when he gave up only one hit.

Knoch scored four runs in the second and gave Shinsky a 5-2 lead after three innings. The first run scored on an error and the second when Bucko walked with the bases loaded. Another run scored on a fielder’s choice and Shinsky plated another with a single.

In the third, Garrett Traggiai, who had two hits, had an RBI single. Abington Heights used four pitchers against the Knights, who also got two hits from Asa Adams.

“From day one, we said we could do this, win a state championship,” Shinsky said. “I’m serious. We knew we had the pitching and the hitting. We said, ‘Really, who’s going to beat us?’ I think that’s one of the reasons we got this far because we just believed.”

Mike White: mwhite@post-gazette.com, 412-263-1975 and Twitter @mwhiteburgh.