Late-season push led North Allegheny baseball to PIAA playoffs
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Thursday, June 14, 2018 | 11:00 PM
Luke Trueman had the ultimate short-term mindset for North Allegheny baseball. All the Tigers wanted to do was figure out a way to stretch out their season by one more game.
After nearly sliding out of the WPIAL Class 6A playoffs by losing seven of its last nine and final three section games, North Allegheny scraped in, via a three-way tiebreaker, as Section 1's fourth-and-final playoff team.
“Our mindset was seven more innings,” said Trueman, who pitches and plays outfield. “Once we started to realize we only had seven more innings left together, we were like let's get seven more. The first playoff game was where everything clicked together, and it's where we wanted to be.”
North Allegheny, which finished 14-12, ended up earning six extra games and 43 more innings. One of the Tigers' playoff victories — a 3-1 decision over McDowell in the PIAA first round — went to extra innings.
Both of North Allegheny's playoff losses came to the same team. The Tigers fell to Canon-McMillan in the WPIAL finals and PIAA quarterfinals.
It marked the second straight year North Allegheny lost in the WPIAL title game. Tigers coach Andrew Heck was pleased with how the team recovered after a rough end to the regular season.
“I think it stems throughout the entire season,” Heck said. “The main goal every year is you have to get into the playoffs to do anything. It's important to learn from everything you have, you go good and bad throughout the entire season. It's a learning curve. You want to be playing your best baseball at the end of the year. We did some good things in a lot of those games and got healthy at the right time.”
The Tigers also started to find a way to scratch across runs in the playoffs. Finding a consistent spark at the plate was difficult for North Allegheny, which hit .235 and plated 105 runs during the season.
“We also figured out we may need to do things different on the offensive side of things in the playoffs,” Heck said. “Get some scrappy runs if we weren't able to drive runners in all the time.”
Trueman, who was 3-1 with a 0.78 ERA on the mound, led the team with a .269 batting average and drove in 18 runs.
“You realize when you lose seven of nine, you aren't as good as you think you are,” Trueman said. “It started with routine plays, putting the ball in play and throwing strikes as a pitcher. The whole team started doing that.”
Once it did, North Allegheny started extending the season, one inning at time. Penn-Trafford, Bethel Park, Hempfield and McDowell all fell to the Tigers.
While North Allegheny fell short of a WPIAL title for the second straight year, the Tigers are excited to get another shot at it next spring.
Josh Rizzo is a freelance writer.
Tags: North Allegheny
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