By Randy Whitehouse,Staff Writer

AUBURN – Jon Rutt wore long sleeves to the mound in the Saturday swelter. Seems he’d been doing that all season, just to keep his arm warm.

The Jay Tigers made a key fielding error, just as they have for much of their season, only this time, they couldn’t find a way around it.

Old habits die hard, which turned out to be a good thing for St. Dom’s in the third playoff game in as many years between the two teams.

Rutt threw 128 pitches in the heat, and three unearned runs in the third proved to be the difference as the top-seeded Saints earned their third straight trip to the regional championship game with a 5-2 win over No. 5 Jay in the Western Class C semifinals.

The right-hander fanned 10 and gave up four hits before tiring and giving way to reliever Brent Cary with two outs and the bases loaded in the seventh. Cary stranded the tying run at first by getting Justin Wells to foul-tip strike three into the mitt of catcher Mike Carpenter.

“The most I’ve pitched this year was five innings and, I think, 64 pitches,” said Rutt, explaining why he was wearing the long sleeves on a 90-degree day. “I had twice that today, but I had to keep this (arm) as warm as possible.”

“I don’t know if that was his best curve ball, but it was good enough. He seemed to be fooling our hitters and keeping them off balance,” Jay coach Chris Bessey said. “I don’t know how many called third strikes he had on our hitters (five).”

Jay (11-8) got an equally gutsy effort on the mound from Ryan DiPompo, who was working on three days’ rest, plus a stint catching in the heat in Thursday’s quarterfinal with Winthrop. The senior gave up an RBI single to Brady Blackman in the first, then proceeded to strand 10 baserunners through the first four innings.

Unfortunately for him, though, an easy force-out at second that would have cleared him of a bases-loaded, two-out jam in the third was dropped by the shortstop, allowing Rutt to score to make it 2-0. Peter Lewis (three hits) followed with an infield single to score the third run, and DiPompo then hit Jake Albert with a pitch to score Cary and give the Saints (15-1) a 4-0 lead.

“That’s the way it’s been all year. When you don’t correct them throughout the year, you can’t expect to overcome them against a team like St. Dom’s,” said Bessey.

“We put the ball in play against DiPompo,” said Saints coach Bob Blackman. “We wanted to make them field the ball, and at the same time, get his pitch count up, too. He battled, but our goal was to not give him anything easy.”

The Tigers made it a little easier on Rutt in the fourth. With two on, Justin Wells cranked the first pitch he saw over the center fielder’s head. DiPompo scored easily; Jacob Farrington could have been close behind, but he stumbled heading into third, forcing Bessey to hold him up. Rutt then buckled down and struck out the next three batters, the first swinging on a curve ball and the last two on fastballs over the inside corner.

“I gave up two consecutive hits on pitches that were up. They were both supposed to be high and tight, and I left them out over the plate belt-high,” Rutt said.

“We had our chances,” Bessey said. “I think we hit the ball just as well as they did, and Ryan pitched as well as Rutt did, without the strikeouts.”

St. Dom’s advances to Wednesday’s regional final at St. Joseph’s College to face No. 3 Telstar.