Bourne forces a Game 3 with Harwich in the Cape Cod Baseball League Championship

HARWICH — Coming into Sunday night's Cape League Championship Series showdown with the Harwich Mariners down a game, you would have thought the Bourne Braves would be tight, or nervous.

Far from it.

Bourne was confident and loose from the jump. The Braves leapt out to an early lead, and kept it throughout in a 7-1 win at Whitehouse Field .

The victory sends the opponents to a Game 3 in Bourne Monday night.

"We were in this position last round, down 1-0," Bourne manager Scott Landers said. "You can't panic. You've got to win two out of three. No matter what game you win or lose. So we knew that. Our backs were against the wall a little bit. But like I told them yesterday, you can't play tense. You got to play loose, and play your game. We made some mistakes (Saturday) that were unacceptable, and we couldn't make them today."

David Lewis (Virginia Tech) had one of the big blows of the game with a home run, and said his teammates were not about to play scared.

"We weren't really worried about it," Lewis said. "We knew we had the guys. We had the guys in the bullpen ready to go. We just treated it like any other game, go out there and have fun, and play our brand of baseball."

Bourne jumped out with a single run in each of the first four innings. Whether it came on big flies or small ball, everything early on seemed to be working for the Braves.

In the first inning, Braden Holcomb (2-for-4 with two runs scored) of Vanderbilt had a two-out base hit to center. Chase Meggers (Oregon) then crushed a triple to right center that scored Holcomb and give the Braves an early lead.

"I was just looking for a good pitch to hit," Meggers said. "There was two outs, I was just trying to barrel up the ball. I saw the pitch up, and I just drove it, and I did what I was supposed to do with it."

In the second, Lewis led off, and absolutely blasted one that traveled 401 feet just left of center. He got all of it, and pumped up his dugout in the process.

"It felt great," Lewis said. "That's my first (home run of the summer). Only been here about three weeks now, so it's my first one."

Not bad timing on Lewis' first. In the third, Holcomb reached on a hit by pitch, and Meggers followed with a walk. A base-hit bunt on an attempted sacrifice by Chris Stanfield (LSU) loaded the bases. Lewis grounded into a double play, but Holcomb scored to make it 3-0.

In the fourth inning, Tristin Bissetta (2-for-3, two runs scored, one RBI) of Clemson doubled, then took third, then combined with Ethan Conrad (Wake Forest) to execute a double steal that Bissetta scored on as the Braves led 4-0.

Harwich answered in the bottom half when Cam Maldonado (Northeastern) beat out an infield single that allowed Danny Dickinson (LSU) to come home.

But the Mariners could not muster anything more. Bourne pitchers Trystan Levesque (URI), Griffin Hugus (Miami), and Justin West (Louisville) did a good job all night of escaping jams and snuffing out would-be rallies. Hugus earned the win.

Bourne tacked on three more insurance runs in the top of the eighth. Bissetta had an RBI double, and Conrad scored two with a single to center.

That was more than enough for Bourne, which now finds itself on the precipice of a third-straight title.

"We did it last year, too," Landers said of having a winner-take-all. "I wouldn't expect anything different. Harwich is a good club, and they got us yesterday. We got them today. Hopefully, it will be a battle, and we'll come out on top tomorrow."

Adam Kurkjian covers high school sports for the Cape Cod Times . You can contact him at akurkjian@gannett.com and follow him on X at @AdamKurkjian.

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This article originally appeared on Cape Cod Times: Bourne forces a Game 3 with Harwich in the Cape Cod Baseball League Championship