By Tom Housenick
For The Daily Item
BOYERTOWN — Upper Dauphin manager Scott Deitrich tried to keep his players in a routine.
The one that led up to Wednesday's win over State College in the Pennsylvania State American Legion baseball tournament seemed to work well, so why not stick with it, he figured.
Everything stayed the same for Thursday's elimination game against Millcreek — except for the outcome.
"We just left our bats at home," Deitrich said.
Bobby Roach tossed a complete-game two-hitter and Millcreek batted around for all of the game's runs in the sixth inning of a 5-0 win at Bear Stadium.
Millcreek (37-11) plays at 4 p.m. today against Boyertown in the next round. Upper Dauphin's stellar season ends at 23-4.
"You're not going to win many games when you only get two hits," Deitrich said simply.
Upper Dauphin got what it had hoped from starting pitcher Tyler Koppenhaver. He allowed only three earned runs on six hits in six innings. But a defensive miscue and a lack of offensive punch did in Deitrich's bunch.
"Tyler did everything we could have asked for," the UD manager said. "He hasn't pitched a lot for us this summer. He threw a lot in the high school season and then hurt a finger on his pitching hand, so we held him back.
"He threw great. He threw strikes. (Wednesday), we got 13 hits. I thought our bats were coming around. I really thought we'd hit better (Thursday)."
Millcreek, which didn't get its first hit until Corey Anderson's one-out single in the fifth, batted around in the home sixth to break a scoreless tie.
Roach doubled to right-center field and scored when Alex Margraf's grounder to third was thrown away. Margraf made it all the way to third on the play. J.P. Frey hit a sacrifice fly to a 2-0 Millcreek lead.
"We had the top of the order up and were just sitting on strikes," Roach said. "The error was definitely big for momentum, big that we were able to capitalize on it."
Kevin Stoicovy and Brik Zivicovich then singled, with Zivicovich taking second when Upper Dauphin threw to third to try to get Stoicovy. Both runners scored on Anderson's single just out of the reach of UD second baseman Ethan Calnon, who was part of a drawn-in infield.
After a walk and a wild pitch, Matt Wilwohl completed the scoring with a sacrifice fly.
"The error hurt," Deitrich said. "You have to make all the plays at this level. You hate to say that one play cost us, but … They hit a few balls, too, that were just out of our reach, infield singles. A few feet either way and …"
The five runs were more than enough for Roach, who threw 110 pitches. He struck out seven and walked four in nine innings.
"He used both sides of the plate. He was up and down in the zone," Deitrich said. "We had some chances."
Roach walked Tyler Herb and Zach Markel with two outs in the first, but got Ben Ancheff on strikes to end the threat.
Herb doubled to left to lead off the fourth, with 4-5-6 in the order coming up to bat, but Herb never moved.
"I think we were a little bit anxious," Deitrich said. "We didn't work to get ahead in the count there, like we had been."
Roach retired 11 in a row after Herb's double and 17 of the last 19 batters he faced.
It was in sharp contrast to Millcreek's game Wednesday against Pennridge, a 16-3, 7-inning loss.
"It's never easy to shake when you get beat that bad," Roach said. "You never want it to be that bad again. This was a big win for us, to show that we wanted to come back and be here a while."
Ancheff pitched the final two innings for Upper Dauphin, a day after beating State College in a complete-game 9-3 win. He allowed three hits and struck out three in 34 pitches Thursday.
Roach came into Thursday's game with a 5-0 record and a 2.32 ERA in seven appearances this season.
