The O'Fallon High baseball team played the role of spoiler Monday at Belleville
West.

Lefthanded starter Brian Gass allowed two hits through four innings and five
Panthers drove in runs as O'Fallon dumped the Maroons 5-3 in a Southwestern
Conference game.

O'Fallon upped its record to 23-7 overall and 8-5 in the conference. West,
ranked No. 5 in the Post-Dispatch large-schools rankings, dropped to 17-6,
11-2. The Maroons, who hold a half-game lead over Edwardsville, last were
conference co-champs in 2001 with the Tigers and they last won an outright
title in 1997. They play today at East St. Louis.

Gass improved to 8-1 in his four-plus innings. He gave up one run and three
walks, hit one batter and struck out six. Daniel Gebert, who pitched the final
three innings, picked up his second save of the season.

"I told our guys coming into this game, this was our conference championship,"
Panthers coach Jason Portz said. "If we can play a role in this game, this is
our conference championship for us. Let's go into the game with this mentality.
We can play a role in the conference, and we did that today."

After starting the conference season 0-3, O'Fallon has made big strides and
would finish 9-5 if it wins today at Granite City.

"We've played very competitively in the conference, and we just haven't gotten
the wins," Portz said. "And that's going to happen with a youthful team."

O'Fallon has seven sophomores and juniors in the starting lineup, but seniors
Chris Gottschall and Ben Larimer got the Panthers on the board in the first
inning off West starting pitcher Curtis Kelso (6-3). Each of the seniors had
two-out, run-scoring singles as O'Fallon went in front 2-0.

West tried to respond in its half of the first after Tony Matecki and Corey
Muendlein singled to start the inning and were at second and third with the
heart of the Maroons batting order at the plate.

But Gass fanned Stephen French looking and struck out Jordan Harres and Derek
Hoppe, both swinging. Of the three, only Harres was able to foul off a pitch.
After that, Gass settled down but left in favor of Gebert in the fifth after
walking the first two batters.

"It's just tough to get going in that first inning, especially on a road
field," Gass said. "After that it was pretty easy. It just takes some time to
settle down and throw some strikes."

The Maroons managed to get a run in the fifth, and in the seventh they were
looking at a big inning, especially when Muendlein crunched a no-out, two-run
double to right making the score 5-3. But he tried to stretch the double into a
triple and was gunned down at third.

""He was being aggressive there, and that one came back to haunt us," West
coach Lee Meyer said.

Reporter Ken Roberts
E-mail: kroberts@post-dispatch.com
Phone: 618-257-0745