N.B. baseball qualifies for state tourney at the cutoff date
Raiders come back to defeat Middlesex on last day of qualifying
BY GEORGE ALBANO Staff Writer
The North Brunswick High School baseball team couldn't have picked a better time to play their best ball of the 2008 season.

The Raiders have won four of their last five games, including a dramatic 11-9 come-from-behind victory over Middlesex last Thursday, the day before the state cutoff. The win evened North Brunswick's record at 9-9 and made the Raiders statetournament eligible.

"We like to make things difficult on ourselves," joked head coach Ryan Lillis. "I almost had a heart attack, but the guys really came through."

Not a second too soon, either. After a three-game mid-season losing streak left the Raiders 5-8, their backs were clearly against the wall. But North Brunswick responded with three straight wins in four days, defeating New Brunswick 15-5, Perth Amboy 9-0, and Monroe 5-1 to even its record at 8-8.

Then after a loss to Edison dropped the Raiders back to 8-9, their state-tournament hopes all came down to Thursday's game against Middlesex, which was also their opening contest in the GMC tournament.

And whenMiddlesex scored three runs in the top of the fifth to snap a 6-6 tie and take a 9-6 lead, things didn't look promising for North Brunswick.

"We were down by three runs and had nine outs to work with," Lillis said. "But we ended up putting up five runs."

The big blow was a three-run homer by Matt Stasik in the last of the sixth, which gave the Raiders an 11-9 lead. Sophomore pitcherAlex Taylor,who hurled 5 1/3 innings of relief to pick up the win, then retired the side in the top of the seventh to preserve the win and punch North Brunswick's ticket to the state tournament.

Stasik, who belted a grand slam in the first inning, finished 4-for-4 with seven RBIs. That lifted his batting average up to .448 and the junior third baseman now has three home runs, 11 doubles and 22 RBIs on the season.

"Matt's been consistent throughout the season," Lillis pointed out. "Obviously it was a welcome lift to get a game like that. You don't see that too often.

"But he has 22 RBIs, so he's been pretty consistent. That game obviously ballooned his stats, but even before that he had 15 RBIs coming in and was hitting over .400. So, he's been pretty consistent."

So has Elijah Yarborough and Jacob Baron, two more juniors and the only two players who started a year ago. Yarborough leads the team with a .470 batting average and has a pair of homers, 11 doubles and 14 RBIs, while Baron is hitting .431 with 12 RBIs and a home run.

"Those are our three big guys," Lillis said.

First baseman JoseArroyo,while not hitting for average, is also putting up some impressive power numbers with a team-high four home runs to go with 16 RBIs.

But the Raiders have also been getting good production from their pitchers. In fact, during their recent three-game winning streak, they received complete-game efforts in all three games as Yarborough beat New Brunswick, Taylor shut out Perth Amboy, and Baron limited Monroe to just one run.

"They did an exceptional job," Lillis said. "To be honest, our pitching has been one of our bright spots all year. Sometimes our defense lets us down, but we've been getting solid pitching from all our pitchers all year. One thing I've been happy about is our pitching.

"Certainly we have the bats to back up the pitching, but there were some games where we just didn't make the plays on defense. It's been like that most of the season, but we found a way at the end and showed some consistency the last week and a half. Hopefully that can continue for the rest of the season and into the state tournament."

North Brunswick was scheduled to play JFK in the second round of the GMC tournament on Saturday, but was rained out, and the game was postponed again on Monday and pushed to Tuesday, weather permitting. Because of the backup, a win in the round of 16 meant the Raiders would have to come right back and play in the quarterfinals on Wednesday.

But Lillis said he'd have no problem with the quick turnaround, not if it meant his team would advance.

"We'll be ready against whoever we have to play," the fourth-year head coach, who led North Brunswick to the GMC White Division crown last year, said.

The Raiders graduated 10 seniors, including seven starters and its top three pitchers, from that 14-11 team, and although Lillis thought this year's squad had just as much talent, maybe their youth and inexperience did surface at times during the season. Maybe it just took them 13 games to finally come of age.

"I hope that was the case," Lillis said. "I knowthe talent is there and I knowthey can do it. It's a very talented group. But every once in a while, I don't know what it was, they seemed to lose their concentration. Maybe it was the sign of a young team.

"But I really think they learned how to win," he added. "They finally got that killer instinct and figured out how to win games and put teams away.We were down and out in our last game (against Middlesex), but they battled back hard to win. Hopefully that was us coming of age."

Maybe it took longer than he thought it would, but Lillis is just happy to see his young teamreturn to the state tournament.

"Especially the way we did it.We didn't back in," he said. "We didn't play well at the beginning or the middle of this season, but right at the end we were clicking on all cylinders. We did what we had to do."

And as a result, the Raiders will still be playing baseball next week.

"I'll find out the state seeds later this week," Lillis, who led the Raiders to a 4-3 win overManalapan in the opening round of last year'sGroup IV state tournament, said. "But I believe we'll be playing onMonday."