Santa Margarita beaten by no-hitter at Little League World Series

WILLIAMSPORT, Pa. >> The pregame was once again packed with activity as Santa Margarita’s all-stars were greeted by players from both the Pittsburgh Pirates and St. Louis Cardinals at the Little League World Series.

The MLB teams were in town for Sunday Night Baseball, which was played at a minor league baseball stadium in Williamsport as part of the festivities. Before getting ready for their game, the big-league players met the young ballplayers.

The moment was special, but the Southeast Region champions from Greenville, North Carolina, gave Santa Margarita little to celebrate once the game began. After opening the LLWS with a perfect game, the Southeast’s pitching trio no-hit Santa Margarita and snapped its 17-game winning streak with a 16-0, five-inning victory.

“They are all champions,” Santa Margarita manager C.J. Ankrum said. “There’s only one team that is going to leave here with the banners. It’s not about adversity. It’s not about having your back against the wall anymore. These are the best 16 teams in the world and the best eight in the United States and we got punched in the mouth. I would rather get knocked out than TKO’d, and that’s what they did to us.”

Santa Margarita fell into the loser’s bracket to face Mid-Atlantic champion Jackson, New Jersey, which bounced back from an opening-round loss with a 15-5 victory over Great Lakes.

“There’s a reason there is a loser’s bracket,” Ankrum said. “There’s a representative from the loser’s bracket that plays in the championship and we’ll go through it and do the best we can.”

In its opener, the Southeast used three pitchers to combine for a perfect game. Those pitchers, who were all available Sunday, were led by the efforts of Chase Anderson, who kept the perfect game going through the first three innings against Santa Margarita.

The run support was not too far behind after Carson Hardee connected for a grand slam in the second inning.

Anderson, Matthew Matthijs and Will Casey combined to retire 10 consecutive batters before giving up a baserunner — the first allowed by the Southeast in the Series.

“At the end of the day, I have nothing negative to say about our kids,” Ankrum said. “They put their heart and soul into the game and that’s a really, really good team in the Southeast.”

Good might not be enough to describe the start the Southeast has had at the Series. The group hasn’t allowed a hit in 11 innings and has outscored its opponents 28-0.

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“You can’t write it any better than that,” Southeast manager Brian Fields said. “I told them after the game you talk about peaking at the right time. We had everything working today.”

Anderson, Matthijs and Casey have combined to strike out 17 batters in 11 innings.

“These guys continue to pound the strike zone, they change speeds, they get ahead,” Fields said. “They let that defense play. We’ve relied on that pitching and defense all summer and it was just a matter of time until those bats woke up.”

The Southeast scored in the first inning after Matthijs drove a ball into the right-center field gap and Thomas Barrett hit a single. In the second, JoeJoe Byrne and Hardee homered in a five-run inning.

The Southeast put the game away in the fifth with nine more runs, invoking the 10-run mercy rule after retiring Santa Margarita in the bottom of the inning.