Bellarmine pitcher Justin Calomeni pulled off the improbable on Wednesday, shutting out high-powered St. Francis for the second time in less than a week.
The Bells won the West Catholic Athletic League semifinal playoff game 3-0 on a cool night at Santa Clara University's Schott Stadium. Bellarmine now advances to meet Serra in the title game, at 6 p.m. Thursday at SCU.
Calomeni, a Cal Poly San Luis Obispo commit, kept St. Francis hitters off balance the entire game. The senior ace gave up four hits while striking out four and walked two, with two batters hit by pitches.
Calomeni, who received a wonderful defensive effort from his teammates, including diving plays by shortstop Scotty Jarvis and third baseman Brandon Wong, was grateful for the players behind him.
“I threw well, but we don’t win that game if my defense doesn’t make play after play out there for me," Calomeni said. "They were insane out there.”
Bells coach Mike Rodriguez was proud of Calomeni’s performance as well.
“Outstanding, nothing less than outstanding," Rodriguez said. "The competitiveness that he showed up with, the ability to mix three pitches, to keep an offensive team like them off balance was nothing less than outstanding.”
For St. Francis, junior starter John Gavin struggled early, giving up runs to Bellarmine in the first as well as the third inning, walking in two of those runs after loading the bases. Although giving up the only runs of the game, Gavin still managed to strike out seven while only allowing five hits over five innings.
Tyler Deason, who started at third base for the Lancers, came in to pitch the final two innings of the game, only letting one runner reach on a walk, and not yielding any runs.
Jarvis aided the Bells offensively, reaching base three times going 1-for-2 with a walk, hit by pitch and a first inning RBI.
The Lancers failed to execute throughout the game on offense, leaving eight runners on base. St. Francis also had trouble stringing hits together.
The setback was the Lancers' third in nine days. Now St. Francis must regroup for Central Coast Section playoff action, where the Lancers are still expected to be the No. 1 seed in Division I.
“We’re going to keep doing the same thing we’ve been doing all year," Lancer coach Mike Oakland said. "Keep practicing, keep trying to improve in the different areas of the game, and come out in the first round of CCS and hopefully have a good performance.”
As for Bellarmine, it plans to pull out all of the stops against Serra.
“All hands on deck, whatever we can do to score, whatever we can do to keep them from scoring, we are going to try”, Rodriguez said.
