Playoff roundup: St. Mary’s tops Rocklin; Oakmont, Bradshaw Christian win section titles
Neither roster included many football players, but fans kept score from November.
That’s when the Rocklin Thunder beat St. Mary’s of Stockton inside Hughes Stadium to win a CIF Sac-Joaquin Section football championship. On Thursday night on the same Sacramento City College campus, the schools met again, this time in baseball, and this time the top-seeded Rams exacted a measure of campus revenge with a 6-1 victory over Rocklin in the Division I section title game at Union Stadium.
Tanner Groves, headed to the University of Washington, fired a complete-game four-hitter with no walks, and Michigan-bound slugger Michael Quedens roped a two-out, two-run single to cap a three-run fourth inning to give St. Mary’s (28-5) its 17th consecutive victory and its first section banner since capping a three-peat in 2012.
St. Mary’s went 15-0 in the Tri-City Athletic League with nonleague victories over Woodcreek, Jesuit and De La Salle and a 2-0 loss to Elk Grove.
Ethan Brown gave Rocklin (24-10) a 1-0 lead in the top of the third inning with a two-out double, but the Sierra Foothill League champions could not record their 14th comeback victory. Senior third baseman and captain Troy Ueltzen had two hits for Rocklin, which won the most competitive and deepest league in the section. The SFL includes preseason Bee No. 1 Whitney and Granite Bay, which plays Elk Grove on Friday night for the D-II championship.
St. Mary’s and Rocklin advance to the CIF Northern California regional championships, which start Tuesday at home sites. The CIF will post those brackets on Sunday afternoon.
Division III
Oakmont 3, Central Catholic 0: Arizona-bound first baseman Tony Lira drove in a run with a single in the first inning and the top-seeded Vikings scored runs in the third and fourth on errors to beat the Raiders of Modesto at Islander Park in Lathrop.
Trevor Wilson was superb on the mound as the Vikings of Roseville repeated as champions after winning the D-4 title in 2023. Committed to UC Irvine, Wilson tossed a complete-game two-hitter with 11 strikeouts and no walks to improve to 10-1 for Oakmont (27-7), which posted nonleague wins this season over Whitney, Woodcreek and Granite Bay for coach Paul Martinez.
Oakmont will compete in the NorCal playoffs.
Division V
Bradshaw Christian 8, Sutter 3: Jake Johnson had a two-run triple and Brandon Burden, Micah Nicholson, Alex Crosno and Landon Carter each had RBIs to help the Pride win its second title in three years, this one at Islanders Field in Lathrop.
David Wiser struck out six and walked one to improve to 13-1 as the top-seeded Pride gave Drew Rickert his 10th championship as a head coach or assistant. Wiser, a 6-foot-3 junior committed to Stanford, at one point retired 11 consecutive batters.
Carter had three hits as Bradshaw Christian moved to 29-1 overall and 14-0 at home by winning its 13th consecutive game. The Pride avenged a 13-inning championship game loss to Sutter in the 2023 section finals.
Bradshaw Christian advances to the CIF NorCal rounds two years after winning a title in 2022, when then-freshman Wiser threw a complete-game five-hitter in a 9-0 win over a 33-0 Colusa team.
This story was originally published May 24, 2024 at 10:43 AM.