Day 8 - Game 1 - Oumi Koukou vs. Imabari Nishi Koukou

After a day full of baseball yesterday, with two extra inning games, this game moved on at a very quick clip, finishing within 2 hours! Ohmi Koukou had defeated Matsusho Gakuen 9-3 in their first round match-up while Imabari Nishi Koukou had an easy time with Yashiro Koukou, winning 12-1.

Imabari Nishi had an opportunity to score early in the first. With one down, LF Hamamoto-kun would bloop one down the left field line. Ace Kumashiro-kun followed with a single to right, and 2B Kasahara would walk, loading the bases for C Ushio-kun! After working the count full, he would foul off 3 pitches. On the 9th pitch of the at bat, Ohmi's Hashimoto-kun would throw a breaking ball low that Ushio was fooled on and Ohmi gets out of the jam!

Neither team could get any scoring chances going through the first half of the game. In fact, in the first 5 innings, Ohmi had only 3 base runners - one via the hit and two by walk.

Going into the bottom of the 6th, Ohmi's manager made a curious decision and had their ace Oguma-kun enter the game. Hashimoto hadn't done that badly. After the first inning, he too only had allowed three base runners.

So, leading off the 6th, Hamamoto would single up the middle. Kumashiro, after failing to bunt the runner along, sends a liner to short, bringing up Kasahara. On the first pitch, Hamamoto takes things into his own hands stealing second. It would pay off as Kasahara would single through the left side scoring Hamamoto, who was on the run!

And that's all the scoring that would happen in the game. Ohmi never gave Imabari any significant threats, mostly because ace Kumashiro only allowed two hits, four walks, one hit batter, and struck out nine. Imabari just managed to put a couple of timely hits together to push across a run.