The Cardinal Newman Crusaders will face off against the Cardinal Gibbons Chiefs at 6:30 p.m. on Friday. The two teams each escaped (but just barely!) with wins against their previous opponents.
Cardinal Newman is coming in fresh off a high-stakes matchup with another one of Florida's top teams: American Heritage, who was ranked 18th at the time (Cardinal Newman was ranked seventh). Cardinal Newman narrowly escaped with a win as the team sidled past American Heritage 4-3. The victory made it back-to-back wins for the Crusaders.
Cardinal Newman let Finn Duran and Gabriel Acevedo run wild. Duran went 2-for-4 with one home run and two runs, while Acevedo went 2-for-4 with one home run and two RBI. That home run was Duran's first of the season.
Meanwhile, Cardinal Gibbons waltzed into their game on Wednesday with three straight wins... but they left with four. They came within a single run of losing the streak, but they secured a 4-3 W against the Panthers.
Cardinal Gibbons also got a great performance from Mike Ragusa as he tossed six innings while giving up just one earned run off four hits. Ragusa has become a key player for Cardinal Gibbons: the team is 2-1 when he allows at most one earned run, but 5-8 otherwise.
At the plate, the team relied heavily on Bryce Faison, who went a perfect 3-for-3 with one home run, one stolen base, and two RBI. Those three hits gave him a new career-high. Another player making a difference was Eddie Marshall, who got on base in three of his four plate appearances with one RBI.
Cardinal Gibbons' victory was their fourth straight at home, which pushed their record up to 7-9. A key ingredient in that success has been their performance when it comes to hits: they averaged an imposing 8.75 hits in those games compared to only 5.58 in the others. As for Cardinal Newman, their win bumped their record up to 14-1-1.
Fans could be in store for some top-tier slugging on Friday. Cardinal Newman hasn't had any problems when it comes to power this season, having averaged 0.6 home runs per game. However, it's not like Cardinal Gibbons struggles in that department as they've been averaging 0.8 home runs. With so much power on both teams, it'll be down to the pitchers to keep the mound locked down.
Cardinal Newman was able to grind out a solid victory over Cardinal Gibbons when the teams last played back in March of 2022, winning 3-0. Will Cardinal Newman repeat their success, or does Cardinal Gibbons have a new game plan this time around? We'll find out soon enough.
