Blackfoot baseball team stumbles in the state semifinals for the second straight year

CALDWELL − Zach Reay was a man of few words Friday afternoon.

It was hard to blame him.

The Blackfoot High School head baseball coach could only watch helplessly from the dugout and third base as his team fell in the exact same game it did a year ago. The Broncos suffered arguably their worst loss of the season in a 8-1 Class 4A State Tournament semifinal loss to Moscow Friday at Vallivue High School.

Blackfoot (23-6) will play Bonneville (15-16) in the third-place game at 1 p.m. Saturday right back at Vallivue High School.

“Their guy, their pitcher, he was better than we had anticipated,” Reay said. “We just never got anything rolling offensively. I think we gave them too many free opportunities to capitalize on.”

He’s referring to Butch Kiblen. Moscow’s (19-7) unquestioned ace sat down 11 of his batters and only allowed five hits in a near complete game effort. Kiblen only came out with two outs left in the top of the seventh inning.

The five hits for the Broncos was one of their lowest offensive outputs of the season. But even despite that, they still their chance.

Blackfoot left a total of seven runners on base. It had multiple runners on base in the second and fifth innings. Down 6-1 in the bottom of the fifth, the Broncos had a golden opportunity to get back in the game. They had runners on second and third base with two outs and one of their best hitters at the place in Jace Cooper.

The junior hit .430 and drove in 34 runs on the season. But he popped up to centerfield on the first pitch he saw from Kiblen.

“Anytime you get runners on, you need to capitalize. That’s just the name of the game,” Reay said. “You win ball games when you take advantage of opportunities. You lose ball games when you don’t capitalize. So that’s just the game in a nutshell right there.”

Reay decided against starting Dax Whitney for the second straight game. The senior ace is arguably the best player in the state. He is signed to Oregon State and an MLB prospect. There were scouts from multiple teams there Thursday and Friday, including the San Diego Padres.

The soon-to-be Class 4A Player of the Year entered state with a perfect 10-0 record, 119 strikeouts and an ERA of just .149. He’s only allowed one earned and three total runs all year.

But due to the pitch count, Reay wanted to save him to pitch in a possible state championship game. The strategy worked Thursday, but no so much Friday.

He instead trotted out Nash Randall, the No. 2 pitcher behind Whitney. Randall did have a respectable 6-2 record with 53 strikeouts and a 2.74 ERA. But the sophomore really struggled Friday.

Randall gave up the first of six hits just four pitches in and a run to just the fourth batter he faced. He really got himself into some trouble by loaded the bases in the second by plunking not one, not two, but three different batters in the inning.

In all, Randall loaded the bases five times, hit four batters, allowed five earned runs and even committed a balk. But Reay, who told the Journal Thursday that if his team got in any sort of trouble that he was going to Whitney, never did so.

He stuck with Randall through three innings before replacing him with Easton Cannon, who the Bears padded their lead against in the bottom of the sixth two more runs, in the fourth facing a 6-1 deficit.

The two combined to give up eight hits, seven earned runs and four walks to only five strikeouts. Reay said afterwards that the new plan Friday was not to pitch Whitney until Saturday no matter what.

“We talked as a staff, and regardless of weather it was the third-place or first-place game, we wanted to make sure we had our guy for whatever game we were playing,” Reay said.

Weston Layton and Jake Vance had two hits apiece. Cannon scored Blackfoot’s only run of the game by stealing home on a wild pitch in the top of the third inning. The Broncos can still bring home the first state trophy in nearly a decade. The last time they came away with any sort of hardware was with their state championship in 2015.

“Let’s do the damn thing and go get some hardware,” Reay said. “It would be a step in the right direction. It’s not the end result that we necessarily wanted, but it is what it is.”