Staff photo / Preston Byers Badger pitcher Samantha Bradbury gets ready to deliver during Monday’s playoff loss to Lowellville in Kinsman.

KINSMAN — For almost all of Monday’s Division VII, Northeast 3 district semifinal game between Badger and visiting Lowellville, the pitchers dominated. The Braves’ Samantha Bradbury and the Rockets’ McKenna Lewis stifled opposing batters, resulting in a scoreless tie through five innings.

However, a three-run outburst by Lowellville in the top of the sixth not only broke the tie, but it also proved to be the only scoring of the entire game, as the 12th-seeded Rockets closed out a 3-0 upset road win over the No. 3 Braves.

“Any time you hold someone to three [runs], you should be able to walk out with a win, you would hope. But we just couldn’t get it going from the plate,” Badger head coach Greg O’Brien said.

Through the first three innings, three total players reached base: the Rockets’ Aubrey Kester in the top of the first, and Badger’s Kyleigh Hall and Savannah Steh in the bottom of the first and second, respectively.

Then, to lead off the fourth inning, Paola Andino smashed a pitch to right field, where outfielder Autumn Yesko couldn’t come up with the catch, allowing Andino to zip around the bases for a stand-up triple.

But Lowellville’s offensive struggles only continued after that; Andino could only stand and watch from third base as Kester’s bunt popped out to Hall behind the plate, and, after a Giuliana Alfano walk, Gianna Palumbo struck out and Lewis popped out to Reghan Broadwater at second base.

Rockets head coach Mike Alfano said he worried “a little bit” that his team had missed a big opportunity when they could not get Andino home after her leadoff triple.

“To be honest with you, she should have went because she’s so fast and she would have just made it,” Mike Alfano said. “But I was playing conservative. I didn’t wanna start off the inning getting a girl thrown out with the leadoff runner on. So I played conservative there. I’m glad it didn’t come back and bite me.”

Fortunately for Lowellville, the Braves’ offense could do no better against Lewis, who retired the sides in the bottom of the fourth and fifth innings in order, extending her streak of consecutive batters retired to 12.

“McKenna really dealt from the circle,” Mike Alfano said. “She put the ball everywhere I asked it to be. [Badger] is a great hitting team. If you look at their stats, their averages start with five-something, five-something, four, four, four, four. So she put the ball where it needed to be.”

Finally, in the top of the sixth, the Rockets lifted off.

Eliza Primous led off the inning by dropping in a single over shortstop Madison Lindus’ head. Then, Andino hit a ball back at Bradbury to reach base safely before Kester was hit by a pitch to load the bases.

Unlike earlier, when Andino was left stranded, Lowellville put runs on the board when Giuliana Alfano singled to left field, and both Primous and Andino raced home to put their team ahead 2-0. Later in the half-inning, Kester scored when Riley Goodin reached first safely on an infield error.

Despite its best efforts, Badger proved unable to rally in the sixth and seventh innings.

Sarah Miller’s leadoff bunt attempt in the bottom of the sixth barely failed, and although Lindus singled to mark the team’s first hit since the first inning, Lewis responded by forcing a flyout and groundout to keep the Braves scoreless.

In the seventh, Lewis similarly shut down Badger’s bats, striking out Kiyah Scharfenberg before popping out Steh and grounding out Broadwater to finish out the win.

On the day, Lewis struck out half a dozen and surrendered just two hits and no walks.

“Game to game, each pitcher has a different style, and however she threw the ball, I just think we were just struggling to make solid contact most of the time,” O’Brien said of Lewis. “One night you face fast pitching, the next night you face slow, [you’re] changing to keep up with it, and we just didn’t do a good job of keeping up with the change we saw tonight.”

Despite the loss, Bradbury had eight strikeouts and allowed four hits, one walk and a pair of earned runs. Aside from the sixth inning, she surrendered just one hit.

“Sam did great. She has all year,” O’Brien said. “She had a solid game, gave up a few hits, but that’s going to happen when you’re trying to throw strikes against a team that can hit the ball. She did great.”

Lowellville (8-10), Mike Alfano said, has been playing its very best since an 18-0 loss to rival Springfield on May 7, which he called the “worst game of the season.”

“I think they wore the loss as hard as I did. That’s a rival. Springfield-Lowellville, that’s a rivalry,” Mike Alfano said. “We looked silly in that game. We couldn’t pitch, we couldn’t hit, we couldn’t catch, we couldn’t run. And it was not one girl. It was the whole group. It was us. It was everything. Everybody was out of sorts. It was also a day before prom, which doesn’t help at all. But no, we looked bad. And I think that woke them up a little bit.”

In Wednesday’s district championship game at Alliance, the Rockets are set to play No. 6 Chalker, which Badger beat 8-5 last week and defeated No. 9 Cardinal 8-3 on Monday.

“If they play like they did today,” Mike Alfano said, “I have zero worries. Zero worries.”

With Monday’s loss, Badger, the highest seed in the Northeast 3 district, finished the season with a 12-7 record. The Braves had won their last three games and averaged nearly 13 runs scored per game during the streak.

“Obviously, we didn’t want to end this way. We wanted to keep going; we always do,” O’Brien said. “But they put together a good year and fought through a lot of adversity with the weather this year, injuries and schedule changes. It’s not an easy season to make it through, and they did and they battled.”