For Tamaqua's Brett Kosciolek, it was anything but a normal game.

But to be succesful, the senior knew he had to approach it like it was any other ordinary day.Pitching not only with a heavy heart but also with his team's season on the line, the right-handed hurler kept his emotions in check and delivered arguably the best outing of his career.Kosciolek, dealing with the recent loss of his grandmother, finished with a one-hit shutout to lead the Blue Raiders to a 2-0 victory over Northwestern in the quarterfinal round of the District 11 Class AA playoffs."Yeah, I dedicate this to her today," said Kosciolek, who struck out eight in the contest. "I was thinking about her. I wrote her initials on the mound."She was a fantastic woman and it's sad to see her go, but I tried to focus like it was a normal game."Kosciolek's performance was anything but normal.The 6-foot-7 pitcher retired the first 13 batters he faced, seven of them on strikes. He didn't allow a runner past second base and finished with 99 pitches, 60 for strikes."He's faced some adversity the past couple days," said Tamaqua head coach Jeff Reading. "For him to come here and step up, get on the mound and throw the way he did is a testament to him. He pitched a helluva game."Also pitching well was the Tigers' Jake Augustus. The junior finished with a four-hitter and struck out four batters. But a troublesome fifth frame by the Northwestern defense proved to be the difference.Tamaqua's Casey Rother opened the top of the fifth with an infield single. Matt Minchhoff, looking to sacrifice courtesy runner Harold Moll to second, received a bonus when his bunt up the firstbase line ended up being another infield hit.Zach Coleman moved his teammates into scoring position with a bunt and Jake Humes worked a walk to load the bases with one out. Nate MacDonald followed with a chopper to third, which Tiger third baseman Josh Williamson fielded and fired home for a force out. Unfortunately for the home team, the ball was dropped allowing the game's first run to score.One batter later, Daylon Barron delivered a sacrifice fly to center to make it 2-0."It's always a good feeling when you (capitalize on another team's mistake)," said Reading. "We were struggling finding basehits today so putting balls in play and making them make plays worked to our advantage.""In games like this, three things have to happen," said Northwestern mentor Len Smith. "One is you have to get a good outing on the mound. Number two is you have to play solid defense. And number three, you have to get a crucial hit in a key point in the game. We got the good outing on the mound, but we didn't manufacture any runs and we didn't fundamentaly execute all our plays defensively."The Tigers (16-8) tried to rally in their half of the fifth, but Tamaqua's defense put a quick end to the uprising.Nick Rodriguez drew a one-out walk to end Kosciolek's perfect game and Jordan Storm grounded a clean single up the middle for the Tigers' first hit. But Kosciolek, on a full count to Tyler Wiik, induced a 4-6-3 double play to get out of the inning."If I wouldn't have walked the kid it would've been a lot easier inning," said Kosciolek. "I was still focused ... and I made a pitch and he hit a ground ball and my defense made a great play. My mechanics felt smooth pretty much on every pitch. My changeup was working pretty well and my cutter was too. I was also locating my fastball.""Pitching and defense wins you ballgames," said Reading. "We need to get our hitting moving in the right direction but to go out and have a pitching performance like we did and get the defense behind him was a solid effort."Humes had two hits for the Raiders (14-7), who will now face Pottsville in the semifinals."It always feels good to move on," said Reading. "When you don't that's when you know you're giving your end-of-the-year speech and you're collecting jersies and things like that. We've had great games between the two of us this year, actually the past couple years. So it's just going to be another Tamaqua-Pottsville game."Tamaqua 000 020 0 - 2 4 0Northwestern 000 000 0 - 0 1 1Kosciolek and Rother; Augustus and Wiik. W - Kosciolek. L - Augustus.