One can look at the Northwestern Lehigh baseball team’s Colonial League semifinal win in one of two ways. Either the Tigers’ mistakes weren’t as costly as the ones made by Southern Lehigh, or Northwestern did a better job of taking advantage of the mistakes made by its opponent. Either way, Northwestern beat Southern Lehigh 5-4 in nine innings at Parkland High School on Monday to advance to the league championship game against Wilson.

Northwestern’s Shaun O’Donnell put down 10 of the first 11 hitters he faced and while doing that, his team staked him to a 2-0 lead over the Spartans.

The Tiger offense did some damage against Southern Lehigh’s Janssen Brown to get two early runs before he settled in and made things tougher on opposing hitters.

Watson Church and Eli Zimmerman both drove in runs with doubles in the bottom of the second inning for Northwestern to get things started. Even with that, Brown recorded five strikeouts in the first three innings.

In the fourth, he pitched out of a second-and-third, two-out jam to keep the Northwestern lead at two. In the fifth and sixth innings, Brown allowed just one hit and another batter reached base on an error but the Tigers could not inflict any further damage.

Southern Lehigh looked to create an opportunity with a double steal in the fourth, but Justin Augustus showed why he is one of the better catchers in the league when he threw out the lead runner.

The following inning, things started to get a little ugly. A leadoff single, an error, and a wild pitch put runners on second and third with one out for the Spartans. O’Donnell got Colton Sams to fly out to shallow right, keeping the runners where they were with two outs.

Matt O’Neill followed with a groundball to second that was misplayed, allowing Southern Lehigh to make it a 2-1 game.

O’Donnell surrendered back-to-back extra base hits to open the sixth as the Spartans tied the game and two outs later, Brown helped himself by lining a single to center to give Southern Lehigh their first lead at 3-2. Zimmerman then got the Tigers out of the inning with a nice catch on a fly ball to center to end the inning.

“I feel like if you don’t put us away and pull away from us, you don’t intimidate us,” said Northwestern head coach Brian Polaha. “One or two runs don’t really matter to us even if it’s late in the game.”

Southern Lehigh may have felt pretty confident when Brown picked up his seventh strikeout of the game to open the bottom of the seventh, but the confidence was fleeting.

Cannon Fitch followed with a single to right. As he rounded first to head for second, he tripped over the foot of first baseman Chris Fritts. Fitch crawled back to first but was awarded second after the umpires got together and ruled interference on the play.

A ground ball to second moved Fitch to third and Bobby Croneberger lined a ball into the gap in right to bring Fitch home with the tying run to send the game into extra innings at 3-3.

Both teams went down in order in the eighth and the ninth inning was a strange one.

Sean McMenamy led off the top of the inning with an infield single and was sacrificed to second before moving to third on a wild pitch by Chase Moyer, who had come on in relief of O’Donnell in the seventh.

Another wild pitch went to the backstop, but Northwestern didn’t panic. Instead, Augustus went back to play the ball and threw to Moyer covering home to nail McMenamy at the plate for the second out of the inning with the bases now empty.

“I was thinking crap, that ball’s behind me, but I made a play and helped the team out,” said Augustus of the play. “In the end, you just have to make a play and that actually worked out well.”

Matt O’Neill worked a walk with the 3-0 pitch ticking off Augustus’ glove. The play before may have messed up Augustus and he was not aware that the pitch was ball four and did not immediately retrieve the ball, while O’Neill alertly ran hard to first and never stopped until he reached second base safely.

Luke Kawczenski then doubled down the third base line to bring in O’Neill to give the Spartans a 4-3 lead. After an intentional walk, Josh Farber came on to pitch and got the final out of the inning.

Again though, any confidence the Spartans had was short-lived.

With one out, Zimmerman lifted a little pop-up to the first base side of second. The ball was playable by second baseman Ish Magallanes, but he gave way to shortstop Colton Sams, who had raced over to make the play. When he went from the infield dirt to the outfield grass, Sams tripped, and the ball fell between the two players to put Zimmerman on. He quickly stole second to move into scoring position and then moved to third on a passed ball.

The game was again tied when Fitch lined a single to center to bring in Zimmerman. Fitch stole second and one out later, Southern Lehigh intentionally walked Croneberger and Farber drew a walk to load the bases for Augustus. The senior catcher drove a ball over the third base bag to bring in Fitch with the game-winning run.

“This is my senior year and we’re not going home easy,” said Augustus. “This was our ballgame, and we knew it and this is our championship and we’re going to get it.”

The finals will be a match between the top two seeds after second-seeded Wilson downed Salisbury 4-2 Monday at Easton High School. Northwestern has beaten Wilson twice this season by scores of 5-3 at home and 11-2 at Wilson. The championship game will be played at DeSales University Thursday at 3:35 p.m.