WEST COVINA – Going into the fall, South Hills pitcher Brandon Dieter was being looked at as a possible closer for the Huskies.
However, things changed when two of the three top Huskies pitchers (Ryan Mauch and Andres Alvarez) were lost due to injury for the regular season.
Dieter, a sophomore, won his second playoff game Friday afternoon, as top-ranked South Hills defeated visiting Foothill, 8-1, in a CIF-SS quarterfinal Division 2 game.
South Hills (24-7) will be making its third appearance in the last eight years in the semifinals.
The Huskies will host Damien (17-10), a 7-3 winner over Mission Viejo, on Tuesday.
“We’re playing our best baseball at the right time,” South Hills coach Darren Murphy said. “We had contributions from everybody and it was a great team win. Brandon gave us another outstanding effort.”
Dieter also reached base all three of his at bats, going 2 for 3 (double, reached on an error) and had an RBI.
“(Friday) we faced a division one kid (Foothill pitcher Dillon Brown), and the better the competition, the better our kids get,” Murphy added.
Brown finished with a 10-2 record and will play at Cal State Fullerton next season.
“It’s been a heck of a year and I’ve been playing with a lot of these guys since we were kids,” Brown said. “They (South Hills) hit balls where we weren’t and it just wasn’t our day.”
South Hills, which last won a CIF title in 2009, took a 2-0 lead on a two-run home run by junior left fielder Karlos Morales (2 for 3, 3 RBI), scoring junior first baseman Johnny Dearth (2 for 4).
The Huskies added another run in the inning on a single by Chris Moya for a 3-0 lead.
Foothill was led by senior centerfielder Jack Jansen with two hits, including a double in the third inning, which advanced leadoff hitter Evan Mickelson to third. Mickelson scored on a wild pitch by Dieter to trail, 3-1.
Dieter struck out five, scattered six hits and retired nine in a row from the third to the sixth inning.
“It was a great win (Friday) and we really hit the ball well,” Dieter said.
The Huskies took a 5-1 lead in the third on consecutive singles by senior right fielder Quin Cotter and junior third baseman Jake Dominguez (2 for 3).
“We ran into a very good team (Friday),” said Foothill coach Vince Brown, who took his team to the finals three years ago in Division 1. “In my 20-plus years of being a head coach, I probably could count on one hand the times that a team actually beat us, and this is one of those times.”
