MARSH VALLEY 5, RAZORBACKS 2

In the single-A state tournament, Davon Inglet and Cooper Bowman each supplied two hits for Marsh Valley, which used a three-run fourth inning to create some separation from the Razorbacks, whose season is now over.

Marsh Valley will play at 1 p.m. Sunday.

MINICO 10, RAZORBACKS 8 (From Friday)

When his Razorbacks have a few games coming up, Mikee Blackhawk likes to plan his weeks out in advance. Lineups, pitching matchups, everything.

“And obviously, when there’s an injury, you gotta change some things up,” Blackhawk said.

The injury was to his son, Elias Blackhawk, a key cog who broke his finger on Thursday night laying down what turned into the game-winning bunt single. He was out of Friday’s game, a single-A state tournament semifinal matchup with Minico, which forced the coach to shuffle things around.

Combine that absence with the Razorbacks’ array of errors and you end up with their result Friday night: A 10-8 loss.

“Our issue was, it’s been the strength of us all year, our pitching,” Blackhawk said. “We’ve got kids in a moment, and sometimes the moment’s a little bit bigger than what they can handle. Come out and throw strikes. We’ve talked about that before. So throw strikes. We’ve got a short string with them right now, so if you’re not gonna throw strikes, we’re gonna go to the next guy.”

That was the main culprit in the Razorbacks’ loss. Two pitchers, Alex Winn and Alex Romreill, combined to throw one inning and yield four earned runs and four walks, putting this one out of reach for the hosts.

The other problem: Errors. The Razorbacks committed seven in this loss. Good luck winning any game, let alone one at the state tournament, with numbers like that.

“We pride our program on defense,” Blackhawk said. “And up until tonight, we just had some bad decisions, out of place. We had some hard-hit balls to our guys on the corner that chested them up and I’m good with that. Ball’s coming at you 100 miles an hour.”

Here’s the other interesting part of Friday’s game: The Razorbacks are one of two single-A teams in Pocatello alone. Minico’s team is the only Legion team in their city. That means the Storm don’t have to divide players into teams. They can pool them all into one, collecting seniors and sophomores alike on one team, giving them advantages in age and experience.

Do themes like that tend to factor into games like these?

“Yeah, it does. It’s definitely tough,” Blackhawk said. “The kids know that and we try not to let the kids know what’s going on as far as stuff like that goes. I just want the kids to show up and play. Leave it on the field and we’ll let the chips fall where they may. If we win, great. If not, we’ll look back at it and fix our mistakes and move

- Greg Woods