Brett Carroll
Staff Writer
A victory in the state tournament would go a long way for the baseball program at North Brunswick Township High School.
“Well, with the state tournament coming up, our expectation is just to get some good practices in and try to compete against South Brunswick [High School],” North Brunswick coach Mark Blevins said. “We did beat them earlier this year, but we know that it’s going to be hard to do it again. So, we want to compete as well as we can, and if we can win a state game, then that will be big for our program.”
The Raiders were schedule to play South Brunswick on May 21 in the first round of the Central Jersey, Group 4 Tournament.
Blevins believes that his defense will be key during the state tournament.
“We’ve played really, really good defense this year,” Blevins said. “Every position has a good defender playing it. We have a couple of guys that should be playing baseball in college. That’s how good they are. We take pride in our defense here. On offense, we’ve put the ball in play a lot more this year. We cut down on our strikeouts from last year dramatically. When you put the ball in play, you have more chances for the other team to make errors and stuff like that. Our pitching has been good, but none of my pitchers are strikeout artists. So, it’s another reason why our defense is so key.”
Blevins did feel that the offense for the Raiders will have to step up in order to win, mainly by keeping the ball on the ground.
“We lost to Colonia High School in the county tournament already,” Blevins said. “So, our only focus now is on the state tournament. We got to keep the ball out of the air. Yes, we want to hit the ball hard, and we focus on putting the ball in play, but if we continue to hit it in the air, it makes it easy for the defense to get an out. We got to keep it on the ground.”
Blevins knows that South Brunswick has a lot of talent, but thinks his team has the players to match, despite losing what might be North Brunswick’s best player.
“Well, the biggest lost that we had this year was [senior] Danny Reardon getting hurt last week,” Blevins said. “He was our best pitcher, a great hitter, and also played first base sometimes for us. He dislocated his shoulder when a runner ran into him. That’s a big loss for us.”
So the Raiders will rely on other key players.
“We have [senior] Mike Scimone who’s really good for us. [Junior] Andrew Tan is our shortstop. He’s got like 35-40 RBI this year, which is incredible. Defensively, he’s a great shortstop with a great arm. He’ll probably go Division 1 after high school,” Belvins said. “Center fielder [junior] Christian Petrillo is a strong defensive center fielder. He’s hitting like .380 this year, and he has a bunch of home runs as well. And, [senior] Kelson Hopson has been great in right field for us. He’s our new captain with Reardon out. He’s just been such a great leader for us.”
