Through the first four and a half innings of Saturday’s 6A conference baseball winners bracket semifinal; between Phoenix Brophy College Prep and O’Connor, a pitchers duel broke out between Johnny Casale of the Broncos and Cody Stoller of the Eagles.

Trailing 1-0 in the fifth inning, the Eagles had runners at second and third for the third time in the game to that point and had senior Ky McGary up to bat with a chance to put O’Connor in front for the first time.

Once again Casale was able to get out a jam by striking out McGary to keep the O’Connor threat at bay, just as he did in both the second and fourth innings. That would be the last chance the Eagles got as in the bottom half of the inning, the Broncos scored four runs en route to a 5-0 victory.

“We had guys in scoring position early and often in the game and we couldn’t get that big hit to get the ball rolling. Hats off to Casale, every time we had runners in scoring position he clutched up and got out of it,” O’Connor coach Jeff Baumgartner said.

The #2 seed will not have to play again until 4 p.m. Friday, May 10 ay HoHokam Park in Mesa.

In five innings, Casale gave up three hits and picked up his seventh win of the season, two of which have come in the 6A playoffs.

“We knew he was going to throw a lot of off-speed pitches and we tried to stay back to see it and we did that we just couldn’t capitalize,” said Baumgartner 

In the second inning, Eagles catcher Nathan Bayus opened up the hitting for O’Connor with a double into left center field. He got  to third base following a sacrifice fly but would fail to reach home plate.

In the third inning, the Eagles would get runners to second and third base but once again Casale sent back-to-back batters down with strikeouts to prevent any damage.

In the bottom half of the third inning, the Broncos had a chance to blow the lead open with a swing that went deep into left-center field but Ky McGary would track it down keeping the Brophy threat at bay.

“I think Ky McGary is the best center fielder in the state of Arizona and I think he showed why today, there were three balls that should’ve been triples but he ran them down and caught them in a big field. We pitch to contact and let them hit it as far as they want and luckily we have the outfielders that were able to get it today,” said Baumgartner 

O’Connor (21-8) falls into the losers bracket and will face off against their region rival, the Liberty Lions (20-9) for the fourth time this season at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday night at Tempe Diablo Stadium.

After losing both regular season matchups, O’Connor won at Liberty 4-3 on April 30. The Eagles know that they have to play their game in order to get the opportunity to have a rematch against the Broncos.

“We’re going to take it one day at a time heading into the matchup, we’re going to do what we can to get our best guys into the best positions possible, we did that today and didn’t capitalize but that’s what we’re going to do Tuesday,” said Baumgartner.