RENO — Nothing has been conventional about the journey Basic’s baseball team has been on over the past 13 months. So it was fitting that the Wolves faced a bit of adversity in Saturday’s Class 5A state championship game.

Despite trailing and playing in rough weather conditions, Basic found a way to end its season by hoisting a state championship trophy it wasn’t able to play for last season.

Basic overcame a deficit for its second straight game of the state tournament and a rainy day — which included a lightning delay of nearly 40 minutes — to win the Class 5A state title with a 3-2 eight-inning win over Reno High at UNR’s Peccole Park on a walk-off bases-loaded wild pitch.

“It means everything and the world,” Basic coach Gino DiMaria said. “How much they’ve been through, and we finally come at the end to have this reward of being the state champions, No. 1 team in Nevada, is absolutely amazing and well-deserved.”

It’s the eighth baseball state title for Basic (25-7) and first since 2022. The Wolves, the Southern Region champion and No. 1 seed, didn’t qualify for the postseason last year after they had to forfeit most of their league games for using an ineligible player.

With most of its core back from last year’s team that had its title dreams ended, this year’s version of Basic followed through on its championship aspirations.

“It feels so good,” said Andruw Giles, who started on the mound and gave Basic seven strong innings. “Everything we’ve been through as a team, it means the world to us. We’re going to celebrate like there’s no tomorrow. I don’t know, I have no words right now. We’re all so happy for one another, we love each other, we’re really a family. It means everything for every single one of us.”

Saturday’s conditions were far from ideal with gray overcast skies, rain in the final half of the game, cool temperatures with a wind chill in the mid-40s and the threat of lightning and another delay in the final three innings.

But none of that dampened Basic’s joy as the Wolves celebrated with their championship medals around their neck and most of the players’ hair dyed blond for the playoff run.

This win “perfectly describes our team,” Giles, a junior and Oregon commit, said. “Everything we’ve been through, it has been a roller coaster of all the ups and downs, and now we’re on top.”

‘Kids didn’t quit’

Reno (27-15), the North’s No. 2 seed, needed to beat Basic twice to get the title since the Wolves had not lost in the double-elimination state tournament.

It appeared a second game would be on the way, with Reno leading 2-1 entering the top of the sixth. But for the second straight day, the Wolves found another unique way to win the game after getting a walk-off bases-loaded walk in a state semifinal against Faith Lutheran on Friday.

With two outs in the eighth, Lyndon Lee singled, Dallon Cegavske walked, and Ace Sapp was hit by a pitch to load the bases. That brought up Adrian Ramos, and Reno pitcher Tate Robertson’s pitch bounced in the right-handed hitter’s batter box and skipped to the back wall.

Lee raced home to score the winning run, as his teammates exploded out of the dugout to begin the celebration.

“We’ve been on that end and it’s a horrible way to lose the game, but our kids put pressure on (Reno),” DiMaria said. “We’ve been trailing the whole game, came back and tied it and had an opportunity to win in the bottom of the eighth, and we put pressure on them and forced that situation. The kids didn’t quit.”

It was fitting that Lee, a junior, came across to score the final run. He went 3-for-4 with two RBIs and two runs scored. His solo home run in the bottom of the second gave Basic a 1-0 lead. Then, his RBI single in the bottom of the sixth tied the score at 2-2.

“We did it, the job’s done, and we’re happy,” Lee said. “I was at third base and Ramos was up, and I knew we were going to get the job done, get hit, get walked, anything, but a passed ball happened and I scored. I feel really wet, but we had to do what we had to do and we got it done.”

Lightning delay

Giles, who normally plays center field and pitches as the team’s closer, started and allowed six hits and two runs with three strikeouts on 107 pitches.

Reno evened the score on a Logan Ford single in the third and then took a 2-1 lead in the fourth on a Mac Vandergrift single.

Giles kept Reno from rallying in both innings when he retired UCLA commit Mack Edwards with runners at second and third in the third, and got Darrel Dalen to ground into a force play with two runners on in the fourth.

It looked like Giles’ day would be done after a brief, but heavy, rain shower hit Peccole Park and brought lightning that stopped the game for 40 minutes. But Giles stayed in the game and pitched a scoreless sixth and seventh innings.

“We worked him slowly to get two, three, four innings, so we kind of built (Giles) to get him to this point,” DiMaria said. “He stepped up to the challenge and did a great job … If (the delay) was more than 25 minutes, we would have shut him down, but he felt fresh and felt good, so we decided to get him back.”

The final out Giles recorded might have been the biggest. With two outs in the seventh, Ford doubled deep to center field over Tate Southisene’s head. Ford raced around second, hit the brakes and slipped trying to get back and was tagged out sliding back to second to end the inning.

“That was the best game I’ve ever thrown in my life,” said Giles, who led off the sixth with a single and scored on Lee’s single. “It was something else. I was just trying to do anything I could to help my team win.”

’We clicked’

DiMaria remembers Basic’s title in 2022. He was Gorman’s coach and lost in the 5A title game to the Wolves, which beat the Gaels four times in the postseason that season, twice for the region title and twice in the state tournament.

He stepped down as Gorman’s coach following the season and went to Basic as an assistant to join Scott Baker’s staff. DiMaria, who still teaches at Gorman, was then thrust as the interim coach after Baker’s dismissal.

DiMaria was named the permanent coach over the summer. After an eventful 2024, he helped keep Basic’s group together and on track to get a title the Wolves couldn’t play for last season.

“It’s really special to me. This is a great championship for me as a coach coming into a new program, which is tough to do sometimes because they were so used to somebody else for a long time,” DiMaria said. “We clicked, we jelled right away, they accepted me, and we decided we were going to get here, and we did and made it happen.”

Contact Alex Wright at [email protected]. Follow @AlexWright1028 on X.