After defense and pitching carried the Douglas baseball team through the Northern 4A Regional tournament last week, the Tiger offense picked up its share of the load Thursday night in the first round of the 4A state baseball tournament in Henderson.
Douglas overcame five errors on defense to pick up a 9-5 win over Cimarron-Memorial at the College of Southern Nevada, exploding on offense against the Spartans Brad Oswald, who carried an 0.80 ERA into the game.
"The first win is important," Douglas coach John Glover said. "We didn't play very well defensively, but we hung in there. The kids hit the ball well, spread throughout the lineup and we came up with some big hits at big times. They looked better than they did last week for sure."
The win marked the Tigers' first state tournament win since 1989.
The Tigers pounded out nine hits and had back-to-back four-run innings in the second and third to overcome an early 3-0 deficit.
"We had some errors there in the top of the second but the kids didn't get down, they answered right back," Glover said. "They didn't seem starstruck, but there were definitely some nerves. It's big to overcome that.
"The kids know now that they don't have to play perfect baseball to win here. If you're trying to play perfect, it ups the pressure even more. They know they can handle a little adversity."
The Tigers made five errors in the game to the Spartans three. Two of those errors came in the second inning when A.J. Hernandez reached on a fielding error by Kameron Van Winkle. He was sac-bunted to second. James Carraway singled to short and Nathan Hale reached on an error by Shane Fencl that brought Hernandez in from second and sent Carraway to third.
Two batters later, Kris Kaplan singled to left to drive in Carraway. Both runs were unearned. The Spartans would score one more run in the inning.
The Tigers responded by scoring four runs in the second with one coming in unearned. Van Winkle and Tyler May both picked up RBIs in the inning.
Cimarron would tie the game up in the third, but the Tigers tacked on four more runs in the third to take an 8-4 lead and never trailed again.
Some of the offensive highlights for the Tigers included a solo home run from May in the fifth, an RBI triple from Jeff Crozier in the third, RBI doubles from Van Winkle and Tanner Thomas and a two-RBI single from Troy Torres.
Hoelzen started the game on the mound and picked up the win on six hits, four strikeouts and two walks. Michael Whalin pitched the final 2.2 innings to pick up his first career save. He gave up two hits and walked one.
Next up for Douglas is Bishop Gorman, who is ranked 24th by Max Preps and beat Green Valley 2-1 in eight innings earlier in the day. The Gaels beat the Tigers 8-0 at the Gorman Easter Invitational last month. The two will play at 3 p.m.
Gorman's ace, Jeff Malm, went all eight innings in the game.
May is the likely starting pitcher for the Tigers. The senior topped the school record for career wins with 21, passing current major leaguer Shawn Estes' mark of 20.
"We know if you want to be the state champs, you are going to have to beat a team like this," Glover said. "We're going to try to stay in the game and see what happens. We're excited to play them."