Prep Baseball: Streamwood surges to win

SOUTH ELGIN -- Streamwood looked much better than a No. 20 seed in its postseason opener Tuesday.

The Sabres kept their season alive with relative ease by going on the road and thoroughly thumping No. 13 South Elgin 13-3 in the quarterfinals of the Geneva Class 4A Regional.

Matt Korntved and Gabe Roman both reached base in all five of their at-bats to help lead Streamwood (13-18) to its second-highest scoring output of the season. Korntved finished 2-for-2 with five RBIs and three runs scored while Roman was 3-for-3 with three RBIs.

The run support gave plenty of cushion to sophomore ace Mike Diebold, who turned in an impressive complete-game effort. The Sabres advance to play No. 4 Geneva today.

"I told these kids we're the 20 seed and we don't have to beat anybody, they should beat us," Streamwood coach Steve Diversey said. "If we stay loose and play hard, good things can happen."

Meanwhile, the upset loss marked a disappointing end to the season for the Storm, which beat Streamwood in two of three meetings earlier this month.

South Elgin (13-13) was doomed by sloppy play Tuesday. The Storm committed five errors, and its three pitchers combined to issue nine walks and hit three batters.

"This definitely wasn't the way we envisioned this game to go at all," South Elgin coach Jim Kating said. "That is the hard part because this senior group put a lot of work in and made tremendous strides the last three years. That's what hurts, especially when you lose on your home field."

After building a 3-1 lead, the Sabres broke the game open in the top of the fourth with four runs on five hits. Highlighting the rally was a two-run triple by Korntved, which was followed by an RBI double by Jason Overton and an RBI triple by Roman.

Streamwood tacked on two more runs in the fifth on a two-run single by Korntved before pushing four more runs across the plate in the seventh with the aid of two walks, two hit batters and a two-run single by Roman.

The Sabres finished with 10 hits. Overton (3 RBIs, 2 runs) and Ryan Kiesel (2-for-3, 3 runs) aided the attack.

"We were all excited and pumped up to play today," Korntved said. "I think our whole team was seeing the ball pretty well."

South Elgin starter Josh Myers (4-3) was tagged with the loss after allowing four earned runs on seven hits while walking three and striking out two. Ryan Kellner went 2-for-4 with an RBI and Kyle Kinyon belted a solo home run to pace the Storm at the plate.

Meanwhile, Diebold (5-5) cruised for much of the game, allowing only one earned run on five hits. He struck out five batters and walked only one.

"Mike gets up there and throws strikes and doesn't walk a whole lot of guys," Diversey said. "We knew when we broke the game open that (South Elgin) would have to get a lot of hits to come back, and that's hard because our defense played fairly well."