Pagan Tough On The Mound, West Boca Rolls To 9-0 Win

Matt Pagan gave up just one hit over six innings and West Boca Raton scored in each of the first five innings to pull away for a 9-0 win over South Broward in a regional semifinals playoff game on Friday.

Pagan struck out six and walked only two batters in his 91-pitch outing, 54 of which were strikes.

“Matt Pagan was terrific tonight, very effective, great movement on the ball, throwing strikes, found his breaking ball midway through the game,” said West Boca Raton manager Jerry Albert. “He handled their lineup very, very well. That lineup smoked the ball against Doral (an 8-6 win) a few nights ago. And Matt only gave up one hit to them. Matt did a great job.”

Daniel Norbeck finished up, throwing the final inning for West Boca Raton. The junior right-hander struck out two and allowed just one hit.

Tyler Lichtenberger led the Bulls’ 10-hit attack with two doubles and a single. He drove in three runs and scored another. The senior shortstop also walked twice for West Boca Raton (18-11) ranked #9 in Palm Beach.

Bulls’ leadoff hitter Parks Fucci added two hits and scored a run.

“Tyler and Parks got us going offensively,” Albert said. “Nice win for us and happy to be moving on. Looking forward to the next game up ahead. It’s nice, our kids get to roll into the regional championship now and gives them a chance to do some more special things and add on to the season.”

Pagan helped his own cause with two hits and an RBI. He also walked. Alan Hernandez contributed a hit, an RBI and a run scored. He also drew a pair of walks. Alejandro Rodriguez and Joshua Schainuck rounded out the hit parade with one each. Kristopher Goldstein scored twice for the Bulls while Casey Turner, Derek Godfrey and Max McDougall scored one run apiece. Austin Weissman also drove in a run.

“The game, 9-0, sounds like it’s a big win, but really what I’m happy about is that we were able to manufacture most of those runs,” Albert said. “So, we got guys on, we got them over and we were able to get them in.

“I thought we were very efficient when we got guys on third base with less than two outs. It felt like most of the guys we got on, when we got them to third with less than two outs, we were able to get them across the plate. So, I’m happy about that because we were efficient. We try to be efficient and be able to execute offensively. And tonight, we were able to do it.”

Cristian Brennan and Daniel Wasserman collected the two hits for South Broward.

“We ran into a very hot team in South Broward,” Albert said. “They’ve done a phenomenal job of turning that program around. We knew how dangerous it was coming into this game. They had just beaten a top team in the state in our classification and they had won, I believe, seven of their last eight games. They were on quite a roll. And (manager Antonio Schembari) has done a fantastic job turning that program around very, very quickly.

“So, we knew that if this game stayed close, it was going to be a very dangerous game because they were in a ‘Cinderella’ mode and they’ve been beating everybody lately. So, when we got up by a run or two early on, we wanted to keep expanding that lead so eventually we could tack on enough runs where we could separate ourselves from them.”

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