POTTSVILLE - It's great to have your ace on the mound in a district playoff elimination game. Northwestern and Pottsville both had their aces clash against one another on Friday in their District 11 Class AAA quarterfinal match up.

The Crimson Tide was able to sneak past the Tigers by a 2-0 final score.An Eli Nabholtz RBI single in the third inning and a Brandon Daubert sacrifice fly in the sixth inning was all Pottsville would need.The Crimson Tide had an opportunity to have a big fourth inning, but Northwestern impressively turned a lightning-fast 6-4-3 double play to keep the Tigers in the ball game."We've been pretty good defensively all season long," said Northwestern head coach Len Smith. "We have a great combination of kids defensively up the middle who've turned a lot of double plays this year. Plays like that have really helped our pitchers get out of jams all season."Brandon Eden was on the mound for the Tigers and pitched very well. He had confidence in his defense, as he didn't strikeout a batter, however, he only scattered five hits and issued one walk over a very efficient six innings of work."We got the performance that we wanted from him and that's all we could ask for," said Smith. We asked him to pitch his best and he kept Pottsville off balance all day. He kept us in the game and the chips fell where they did. We asked him to give us a chance at the end of the day and he did."Pottsville head coach Mike Welsh said his team really struggled to get their timing down against Eden and that they had to resort to play some small ball to manufacture some runs.Fortunately for Pottsville, Northwestern couldn't string anything together against Pottsville's ace Eli Nabholtz.Nabholtz was near unhittable in the contest, as Josh Williamson and Brady Mengel had the only two Tiger hits. Nabholtz walked just one and ended the game on a backwards K - which was one of his nine on the day."He's been our go to guy all year long," the Crimson Tide coach explained. "He had a huge performance today and we needed every ounce of it. We sure rode on his back the whole way today."Welsh continued, "Our motto is to survive and advance. It wasn't pretty but we were able to get two runs across and rely on our defense to get the win. Our guys come to play everyday and they play hard."The Northwestern coach is very optimistic about the foreseeable future for Tigers baseball."We're a relatively young ball club and we have a number of guys who made some strides this season. I anticipate our underclassmen will only get better as time goes on. It was a big step for a lot of these kids. Our juniors need to continue to get better as we take it one step at a time and hopefully get a little further. "Welsh and his Pottsville club will face off against Blue Mountain in the District 11 semifinal match at noon today."I have a hard working bunch of kids. They're a polite bunch with a great personality who comes ready to work everyday. All of the kids seemed to bond like brothers this season."Welsh continued, "Toomey is going to be on the mound tomorrow and we're going against a familiar opponent We have a ton of respect for them (Blue Mountain), we know it's going to be hard game and both teams want to get to Coca Cola Park."N'western 000 000 0 - 0 2 1Pottsville 001 001 x - 2 5 1Eden and Breidinger; Nabholtz and Hinchliffe. W - Nabholtz; L - Eden.