May 16, 2021 5 min read

Nick Drake didn’t have much left.

The Canon-McMillan graduate and current Washington & Jefferson starting pitcher had been so good, allowing nary a hit and just two Saint Vincent baserunners through the first six innings of Saturday’s Presidents’ Athletic Conference championship round. After the seventh-inning stretch, with his team nursing a healthy but narrow 2-0 lead, he finally ran into some trouble.

To start the inning, Drake gave up his first hit – a single past the pitcher’s mound and into centerfield – to Matt Evans. A sacrifice bunt moved Evans to second, and Drake subsequently walked Jayke Saiani to put two on with one out.

With Justin Wright batting, Drake threw a wild pitch to move both runners 90 feet, putting the tying run in scoring position.

Presidents’ coach Jeff Mountain already had Cameron Hayman warming up in the bullpen, so when he came out to the mound, many at Ross Memorial Park probably wondered if Mountain would give his starter the hook.

Instead, he gave him three words; “Be The Man.”

“That was my thought process,” Drake said. “Be The Man.”

“We knew he was getting towards the end,” Mountain said. “He’s not a nine-inning type guy. He’s an 80, 85 pitch guy, and he kind of had gotten up to that. That was obviously something that we were aware of, and it’s hard. You never know what to do, (but) I’d rather be a hitter too early than a hitter too late.”

Drake did as he was told. He struck out Justin Wright and Ben Menarchek each swinging and left the game without giving up a run.

“I knew at that moment that we were going to take it home,” he said.

They did. Michael Zito got the last six outs to pick up his seventh save, and the second-ranked Presidents (36-1) won their ninth conference championship of the Mountain era with a 3-0 win over the Bearcats (17-18).

“It never gets old,” Mountain said. “It wasn’t easy. Today obviously showed that. But if you pitch and you play good defense, you’re going to be in games. You’re going to have a chance to win, and I think that was on display.”

For a team who outscored everybody else in the PAC by 53 runs and had scored 17, 19, 20 and 21 at various points this season, Saturday’s win was unconventional. The Presidents didn’t have an extra-base hit, and two of their three runs came on a fielder’s choice and a groundout. In the first inning, leadoff man and eventual tournament MVP Tyler Horvat walked to start the game, stole second, moved to third on a single by Adam Morris before scoring on a fielder’s choice one batter later to put W&J ahead 1-0.

Two innings later, Horvat again led off with a walk, again stole second, then went to third on a flyout before scoring on Morris’ groundout to double the Presidents’ lead.

“You have to be able to play different styles,” Mountain said. “You have to be able to be successful playing different styles, especially (as) you get into a conference tournament, regional type setting. It’s going to be the way it goes sometimes.”

Drake and the Presidents dodged a bullet by getting out of the seventh unscathed and might have gotten a break earlier in the inning. With Evans on first and nobody out, St. Vincent’s most dangerous hitter, TJ Daily – who came into the day hitting .400 – stepped into the batter’s box.

Bearcats’ coach Mick Janosko decided to have Daily bunt.

“We have to get one before we get two,” Janosko said. “That’s my thought process. It’s easy to go back and look at it and say, ‘Maybe I shouldn’t have had him bunt.’ Who knows? We don’t know what he’s going to do in that situation. He may hit the ball out of the ballpark, he may strike out.”

The Presidents added an insurance run in the top of the eighth on Nate Rush’s single.

The Bearcats’ season came to an end despite the efforts of starting pitcher Brendon Lavely, who took the loss despite pitching into the eighth inning, giving up just three runs on five hits, walking five and hitting another.

The winning pitcher, Drake, gave up one hit over seven and struck out eight and walked just two. Drake now hopes to have a chance to pitch in the NCAA Division III Championship Tournament. For him, the key for W&J down the road will be to not act like a team that’s 36-1.

“We’re ranked No. 2 in the country,” he said. “We can’t let that get to our heads because if that gets to our heads, we’re just going to expect to win. We don’t want to expect to win. If we can play level-headed baseball. … then I think we can do great things on the field.”

It’s appropriate a man named Mountain leads the Presidents. W&J has been the kings of the PAC’s proverbial mountain ever since Thomas More left in 2018, and for other conference schools, beating the Presidents is akin to climbing a mountain or pushing a boulder up one.

Metaphors aside, in nearly 19 seasons in Washington, Jeff Mountain has done everything but win a national championship. His Presidents came within one win of the ultimate prize in 2017, and Mountain knows this year’s squad can take that extra step. For Mountain, the Presidents will have to have fortunate to go along with capability for the ultimate objective to finally be achieved.

“It’s a lot of luck,” Mountain said. “You have to have things go your way, you have to have things bounce your way and everything like that. We have to play well. We’re in position, we’re there. So that’s what it starts with.”