TEMPE - Entering Saturday night’s playoff matchup against the top seeded Queen Creek Bulldogs, the Mountain Ridge baseball was playing with house money.

The Mountain Lions entered the winners bracket semifinal of the double elimination bracket with wins over #12 Corona Del Sol and #4 Desert Vista. That put the #5 seed into position to make a semifinal after a season of ups and downs following a brutal regular season schedule with a young team.

“Playing a tough schedule is part of it, you want to play in these games and situations but more than that with the year we’ve had with the group we have, we’ve had to fight and claw all the time,” Mountain Ridge coach Eddie Bonine said.

All the way up to the final pitch of the game, the Mountain Lions (14-13) fought but fell short to the Bulldogs (23-7) 7-4 to drop to the elimination bracket.

Mountain Ridge now faces No. 9 Chandler Basha (18-11-1) at 4 at Tempe Diablo Stadium for a spot in the semifinals.

“I told the boys, 'Do we think it’s going to be straight winners bracket the whole way?' The way the year has gone we’ve won in so many different ways and have lost in a few different ways, it’s part of the journey and because of that our guys will be ready to go Tuesday night,” Bonine said.

Saturday night’s loss was unique for the Mountain Lions, as self-inflicted errors led to easy runs for the Bulldogs, more than a potent Queen Creek offense that averaged seven runs per game entering the matchup overwhelmed the Glendale squad.

“The story of the game was us holding runners and us playing defense, it was that defensive side of the ball that we just didn’t do our part tonight and gave them three or four runs from it and obviously we lost by three,” said Bonine. 

In the first inning following a walk and a stolen base, the Bulldogs opened up the scoring without getting on base via a hit as a sacrifice fly by Cayden Cooper drove in a run. 

In the top of the third inning, with the Mountain Lions only getting on base twice to that point against Queen Creek pitcher Drew Abbott, they attempted a squeeze bunt with Carter Neville and a runner on second base. An errant throw by the Bulldogs third baseman went towards the first base dugout and allowed the runner to score tying the game at 1-1.

“We did a good job of making them attack the strike zone, we’re an aggressive team and that was our game at the plate” said Bonine.

The bottom half of the third inning was where things began to fall apart for the Mountain Lions, the first runner reached first base on a walk from senior pitcher Smith Bailey.

During the following at bat, the runner stole second, then reached third on a balk by Bailey. Two more batters in the inning would reach on fielding errors and one would reach on a double. Queen Creek had three stolen bases and scored on a sacrifice fly that gave the Bulldogs a 4-1 lead with only one hit in the game to that point. 

The Mountain Lions bats went cold while the Bulldogs got more comfortable at the plate. Queen Creek scored in the fourth inning on an RBI single from Cameron Lopez, then added three runs in the fifth on RBI hits by Cayden Cooper, Alex Gamboa and Jet Berry.

The Mountain Lions chipped away at the lead in the sixth on a RBI double by Brady Plecity and loaded the bases in the seventh inning and scored two more runs following an Andrew Hohmann double but it was too little too late.