The Hornets notched only two hits Wednesday afternoon against Maranacook pitchers Logan McLaughlin and Jason Brooks in a 7-1 loss. That result, coupled with a 10-0 walloping from Waterville a day earlier, means Leavitt can’t make the postseason without a victory Friday over Winslow.

“We talked about it almost being a double-elimination tournament.” Leavitt coach Chris Cifelli said. “If we lose this one, we can’t lose another one.”

Maranacook (8-6) stayed in the hunt for a bye in the Class C West opening round and a home quarterfinal, taking advantage of nine walks and four errors to complete a KVAC regular-season sweep of Leavitt.

Cam Brochu went 2-for-3, including an RBI double, for the Black Bears. No. 9 hitter Kent Mohlar had two of Maranacook’s six hits and reached base in all four of his plate appearances. Jason Brooks drove in two runs with a pair of sacrifice flies.

“The top four or five teams in C, they just keep battling and keep winning,” Maranacook coach Eric Brown said. “They’re putting a lot of pressure on us to score some (Heal) points. That was a good win for us. We needed that.”

McLaughlin allowed both Leavitt hits and an unearned run over his six innings, striking out three and walking three.

Leavitt (5-9) scored its lone run on a balk in the third, cutting Maranacook’s lead to 2-1. The Black Bears responded with four runs in the top of the fourth.

“Getting down, it takes away a few of the things we can do,” Cifelli said. “We bunted, played some small ball in that little winning streak, and that gets taken off your plate getting down by that many runs.”

Mohlar sandwiched a second-inning single between walks by Matt Gyorgy and Mark Buzzell off Leavitt starter Julian Kirouac.

Brooks lofted a fly to left field to plate Gyorgy for the first Maranacook run. Brochu followed with a rocket that snuck through a troublesome left-to-right wind for a wall double, scoring Mohlar.

Nick Angello reached on an error, moved up on an Eli Calder single and later scored on the balk in the third. Leavitt left runners at second and third to end the rally, however.

“Their pitcher was able to keep us off-balance,” Cifelli said. “A couple of times we had a few mini-threats, and he was able to work around them. How many times did we pop up? We had a lot of fly balls.”

In the fourth, Max McQuillen singled and Mohlar was hit by a pitch to set up Brooks’ second sacrifice fly. Nick Bowie made Leavitt pay for an intentional walk to Brochu with an RBI single to make it 4-1. Brochu later scored on a balk.

McLaughlin got stronger as the game progressed. His first strikeout of the game ended the fourth inning. He fanned two more in a 1-2-3 sixth before giving way to Brooks, who struck out two looking in the seventh.

“We did throw some off-speed pitches,” Brown said. “Logan’s a good strike-thrower for us. We knew we had to be on top of them. They could battle back on us at any time. They did the first time.”

All four Leavitt errors came in the sixth and seventh, leading to two unearned runs off Calder in relief.

Mohlar delivered the lone hit in that stretch, a single to score Vinnie Birtwell in the final frame. Calder struck out four.

“The attitude we have to have going into it is that it’s pretty much win-or-go-home the rest of the way. We were in that spot last year, too, unfortunately,” Cifelli, whose team also has a home game against Nokomis next week, said. “It’s hard to be close, but if we sit back and reflect, I think we’ve got things going in the right direction with a very young team.”

koakes@sunjournal.com

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