After rolling through the regular season with hot bats and hotter pitching, Conant’s offense fell silent in their final two games and the No. 2 Orioles were upset by No. 18 Hopkinton to end their season.
The Orioles, who averaged nearly nine runs per game this season while allowing under two per, were shut out by Bow’s Brandon Winch to end the regular season. On Thursday, they faced another tough lefty, Hopkinton’s Kyle Slivera, and the Hawks shut out Conant 2-0 to pull off the upset.
“[Hopkinton] played well today,” said Conant head coach Josh Heaphy. “They had a good pitcher and we didn’t get hits. It’s probably on me, not getting them ready for lefties.”
Conant senior captain Craig Bilodeau said he didn’t know exactly what happened to the Orioles’ offense at the end of the year. Maybe it was the lefty pitchers, maybe it was overconfidence after cruising through the regular season — it’s hard to say what befell the Orioles, but Bilodeau summed it up aptly.
“When the bats aren’t going and you don’t get hits, you lose,” Bilodeau said after the game. “It’s tough, it’s tough to go out like that.”
A pair of first-inning singles and a double off starter James Record put Hopkinton up 2-0 early, and that lead would hold. Record pitched a great game from that point forward, striking out three, walking one and scattering eight hits over seven innings.
“That one inning was tough,” Record said. “I left one over the plate and they got runs in, they scored. No reason that we shouldn’t put at least one run up on the board. You’ve got to score a run to win the game. No runs is not going to win it.”
Conant had a golden opportunity to even the score in the bottom of the fourth. Record and Chance Kirby singled and Bilodeau walked to load the bases with no outs. But the southpaw Slivera struck out Quinton Aho, Shawn Marsh and Corbin Sasner to end the threat.
From there, Conant could only get one more runner on base, when Bilodeau reached on an error in the sixth, but that threat, too, ended quietly, and so did Conant’s season.
“That’s how it goes in the playoffs,” Heaphy said. “It’s a one-game season and unfortunately that’s how it’s going to end for us.”
It was the final game for the senior captains, Bilodeau and Kyle Dupuis, the only two freshman on Conant’s 2013 championship team, who went out hoping to bookend their careers with a pair of rings.
“It’s the worst thing for me to say goodbye to CJ and Kyle,” Heaphy said, adding that fellow senior. Quinton Aho “had a hell of a game today.”
“CJ and Kyle have been three-year captains, so to lose them is just crushing for me,” Heaphy said. “They’re the whole soul behind the team. We get down, they get us back up.”
Dupuis is headed to the Marines, while Bilodeau will start his next chapter as a catcher at Plymouth State.
“It hasn’t even hit me yet, to be honest,” Bilodeau said. “I’m going to go home, shower, sit on the couch and I’m going to realize I just played my last high school game, ever. It’s crazy.”
After his final interview as an Oriole, Bilodeau went back to loading Conant’s equipment into the shed, still doing work, as has been his signature for his four-year career. He picked up a batbag, paused, and turned back.
“I think it’s starting to hit me,” he said.