The Brillion Lions baseball team batted it's way out of a tie and into the next round of regional play, ending the season for the Oshkosh Lourdes Knights.

The Knights fell, 9-6, to Brillion in a WIAA Division 3 regional opener Friday at E.J. Schneider Field, despite coming back in the bottom of the seventh inning to tie the game.

Lourdes trailed, 6-5, in the seventh with two outs when Alec Jalovec took a 1-2 pitch to center field for a double. Aaron Williams then came to the plate and knocked an RBI single into left field that tied the game at 6-6.

That would be the last run of the season for Lourdes, however, as the momentum failed to carry over into the eighth inning.

"Alec, with two outs, two strikes, smokes a double," Lourdes coach Jason Herman said. "Right there, all the momentum in the world. Aaron comes through and absolutely smokes one up the middle. I thought maybe we could scratch him across too, and that's what we needed, because we knew who was coming up. But we just ran out of gas, just didn't have enough left."

Brillion's top two hitters, Beau Steinke (.533 batting average) and Andy Popp (.511), started off the top of the inning with back-to-back singles against reliever Justin Hetzel, and then moved to second and third base on a wild pitch.

The Lions wound up getting three runs in the inning for a 9-6 lead, and despite getting a single from Chris Jensen and a walk from Robbie Kleman, the Knights were unable to score in the bottom of the frame.

Steinke and Popp finished the game, going a combined 6-for-8 with two walks.

"It was, do we walk them, or do we not? What do you do?" Herman said. "We had understood and thought they'd struggle with some off-speed pitches; obviously that wasn't the case. They ended up with singles, so it's not like it was the end of the world; we just couldn't get the other outs."

Brillion got a 2-run homer from Brian Krueger in the third inning to take a 4-1 lead.

Lourdes was able to answer in the bottom of the inning with two runs of its own, and the Knights tied the game in the fourth inning at 4-4 after a run-scoring double from Ryne Baehman.

The Knights plated the majority of their runs with two outs against Popp, but it was their gloves that wound up hurting them in clutch situations.

With the score tied at 5-5 in the seventh inning, the Knights could have had a runner out on a routine fielder's choice opportunity. Instead, the Knights tried to throw to second, but the ball wound up hitting the runner and cascading into center field, putting Lions on first and third.

"We've rehearsed that in practice, probably 50 times," Herman said. "And to hit a guy in the helmet, you don't expect that. Maybe a little greedy, but the philosophy is to get the lead guy out. Doesn't hit him in the helmet, we get him out."

Then came a double steal from the Lions, and once again, the ball wound up in center field on a throwing error and the run from third base scored uncontested.

"We knew it was coming, and it was just a miscommunication, which is just unfortunate in a regional game," Herman said.

Leading the Lions is the victory was Andy Popp.  Brillion got the best of voth worlds from Popp as he earned the complete-game eight inning win by striking out seven and going 3 for 4 from the mound with a pair of doubles.

The fifth-seeded Lions have a date with top seeded Winnebago Lutheran Academy in the regional semi-final on Tuesday June 2nd.

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