Parkview Baptist baseball coach Phillip Hawke didn’t mind the early adversity.
The No. 2-seeded Eagles had coasted in their first three playoff games in the Division III select bracket, outscoring their opposition by 24 runs to get within a step of the state tournament.
Hawke discovered his team can play from behind, too, rallying from a three-run deficit in the first inning and taking the lead for good on Luke Pittman’s two-run single in the fifth, securing a 6-4 victory Saturday to sweep No. 10 Notre Dame of Crowley at Parkview.
“As coaches, we said we needed one of these,” Hawke said. “It’s been too comfortable. You know with an historically rich program like Notre Dame, they’re going to come out and give you everything they’ve got, and they did.”
Parkview (31-6) advanced to its third semifinal in four years and will face a familiar foe in District 6-3A archrival, No. 2 University High, at 2 p.m. Wednesday at McMurry Park in Sulphur.
Junior right-handed Cade Durbin (7-1) did an about-face after a three-run opening inning in which he allowed three hits and walked a batter.
Durbin, the son for former major league pitcher Chad Durbin, settled down and allowed a run on two hits over his next five innings before Wesley Marien pitched the seventh.
“I started dialing in the second inning, making pitches, figuring out what I needed to do,” said Durbin, who struck out six, walked four and allowed four runs and six hits on 89 pitches with 61 for strikes. “I figured out my mentality and did what I do best.”
Parkview, the visiting team, took advantage of a pair of Notre Dame errors to make it 3-3 in the fourth. The Eagles, 10-1 winners in Thursday’s opener, tied it up on a fielder’s choice grounder that turned into two runs on a throwing error.
“Those are the little things that are going to break a game,” Notre Dame coach Chad Broussard said. “You give a team like this an inch and they’re going to take a mile.”
Notre Dame (18-16) recaptured the lead at 4-3 on Jacob Trahan’s RBI-single to left in the fourth.
Durbin retired nine of the last 10 batters he faced when Marien began the seventh and hit the first two batters he faced. He responded with three straight outs, including a pair of strikeouts, to get his first save of the season.
Notre Dame replaced starter Nick Menard (3-5) with two runners on and one out in the fifth. Marien drew a walked to load the bases and Pittman delivered Drew LeJeune’s 1-1 offering to left-center field, scoring Brant Melancon and Kelan Guidry.
“They said we were going to figure out a way against a good team and against two good arms,” Hawke said, “and we got the job done.”