It's great to have your ace on the mound in a district playoff elimination game. Northwestern and Pottsville both had their aces clash against one another in last week's District 11 quarterfinal match up.

The Crimson Tide was able to sneak past the Tigers in a tight pitchers duel, 2-0.

An Eli Nabholtz RBI single in the third inning and a Brandon Daubert sacrifice fly in the sixth inning made for all of the scoring in the game.

The Crimson Tide had an opportunity to have a big fourth inning, however Northwestern impressively turned a 6-4-3 double play to keep the Tigers in the ball game.

"We've been pretty good defensively all season long," said Northwestern head coach Leonard Smith. "We have a great combination of kids defensively up the middle who've turned a lot of double plays this year. Plays like that have really helped our pitchers get out of jams all season."

Brandon Eden of Northwestern was on the mound and pitched very well. He had confidence in his defense, as he didn't strikeout a batter. However, he only scattered five hits and issued one walk over a very efficient six innings of work.

"We got the performance that we wanted from him and that's all we could ask for," said Smith. "We asked him to pitch his best and he kept Pottsville off balance all day. He kept us in the game and the chips fell where they did. We asked him to give us a chance at the end of the day and he did."

Pottsville head coach Mike Welsh said his team really struggled to get its timing down against Eden and that it had to resort to small ball to manufacture runs.

Fortunately for Pottsville, Northwestern couldn't string anything together against Nabholtz.

Nabholtz was near unhittable in the contest, as Josh Williamson and Brady Mengel had the only two Tiger hits. Nabholtz walked just one and ended the game with a strike out, which was one of his nine on the day.

"He's been our go-to guy all year long," the Crimson Tide coach explained. "He had a huge performance today and we needed every ounce of it. We sure rode on his back the whole way today.

"Our motto is to survive and advance. It wasn't pretty but we were able to get two runs across and rely on our defense to get the win. Our guys come to play everyday and they play hard."

Smith is optimistic about the future of his team. The Tigers graduate just two seniors in Collin Breidinger and Yanek. While those two will be tough to replace, with all the young players that helped the team this year, Northwestern will look for big things over the next few years.

"We're a relatively young ballclub and we have a number of guys who made some strides this season," said Smith. "I anticipate our underclassmen will only get better as time goes on. It was a big step for a lot of these kids. Our juniors need to continue to get better as we take it one step at a time and hopefully get a little further."

Northwestern went 11-10 this season and finished 10-6 in the Colonial League, missing the league playoffs by one win.

N'Western 000 000 0 – 0 2 1

Pottsville 001 001 x – 2 5 1

Eden and Breidinger; Nabholtz and Hinchliffe. W – Nabholtz. L – Eden.