Basic’s Tate Southisene was confident going up to the plate in the bottom of the eighth inning of a tied Class 5A Southern Region baseball winners’ bracket semifinal Thursday.
He was so confident he let Wolves coach Gino DiMaria know.
“He came up to me and he goes, ‘I got you G,’” DiMaria said. “And he did.”
Southisene followed through on his promise by blasting a solo home run over the center field fence, which gave Basic, the Mountain League’s No. 2 seed, an 8-7 walk-off home win in eight innings over Faith Lutheran, the No. 3 seed from the Mountain League.
“It was like a movie ending scene,” DiMaria said.
Basic (21-6) qualified for next week’s 5A state tournament at UNR, which begins May 15, with the win. The Wolves will also host the 5A Southern Region title game at 10 a.m. Saturday to determine seeding for the state tournament.
“It feels good,” said Southisene, who is committed to play college baseball at USC. “I’m glad we get to go to Reno and compete for a state championship. I was looking for anything over the plate I could do damage to. I (knew) I could end this game with one swing, so that’s what I did.”
Faith Lutheran (19-15) will host either Palo Verde or Las Vegas High in an elimination game at 4 p.m. Friday. That game will determine Basic’s opponent for Saturday’s region title game and the South’s other spot in the state tournament.
Palo Verde and Las Vegas will play in an earlier elimination game at 1:30 p.m. Friday at Faith Lutheran to determine the Crusaders’ opponent.
Thursday’s win was extra special for Basic since the team missed the postseason last year after forfeiting several league games for using an ineligible player.
“They’ve been through a lot and I’m proud of them. They deserve this,” said DiMaria, who took over midway through last season and was given the full-time job over the summer.
“No one’s been through what they’ve been through,” DiMaria added. “This is the closest team I’ve ever coached. These kids actually like playing with each other. They went through things together, they experienced bad times, they experienced great times. This is well, well deserving of these young men to have the opportunity to play for state.”
Another Southisene stepped up for Basic on Thursday. Troy Southisene earned the win on the mound in relief after pitching a scoreless 3⅓ innings to close the game.
“Troy, that’s the first game he’s pitched all season,” DiMaria said. “We’ve been waiting to throw him because he has a hamstring problem. His hamstring was healing, so we figured it’d be the moment to get (Faith Lutheran) off balance.”
Basic scored three runs in the bottom of the first inning on a throwing error and the Wolves added three more runs in the second to take a 6-1 lead.
Faith Lutheran responded with a four-run third inning and took a brief 7-6 lead on a Luke Stringer sacrifice fly. Then Troy Southisene came in and struck out Macen Collura to end the fifth inning.
Koa Won went 3-for-4 for Basic and his RBI double in the bottom of the fifth evened the score at 7-7. The Wolves had a chance to win it in the seventh after Adrian Ramos doubled and took third base on a wild pitch, but Stringer struck out the next three batters to end the inning.
Tate Southisene finished 3-for-4 with three runs scored, two singles and a stolen base.
Contact Alex Wright at [email protected]. Follow @AlexWright1028 on X.
