Lawrence County’s Gage Daley tries to evade the tag of Northeast Lauderdale’s Daniel Richards at third base as he makes the play for an out on Saturday.

Facing elimination, the Northeast Lauderdale High School baseball team needed Landon Keller to keep Lawrence County High School’s big bats in check Saturday evening.

The senior starting pitcher and Meridian Community College signee did just that, employing a mix of fastball, curveball, changeup to limit the Cougars to just five hits.

The Trojans (16-8), meanwhile, needed just one run to win as they edged Lawrence County 1-0 in Game 2 of the first round of the MHSAA Class 4A postseason.

It was just the Cougars’ third loss of the season at 25-3, making Keller’s game all the more impressive as he pitched seven innings and struck out seven. He did issue six walks, but head coach Josh Snider hinted some of those were of the “non-intentional, intentional walk” variety as he was careful about pitching to certain hitters in the Cougars’ lineup.

“Anytime Landon has three pitches working, he’s tough to hit,” Snider said. “He threw all three of them for strikes tonight, and that was humongous for us.

“We went down there (Friday), and those guys can swing it — they were one of the best-hitting teams we’ve seen all year. I knew we had to keep them off balance, and I knew if Landon’s stuff was on, we had a shot. I didn’t think one run would beat them, but it did.”

After dropping Game 1 on the road Friday 4-3, Keller said he understood the magnitude of the game but didn’t let the reality of elimination overwhelm him.

“I was feeling good, confident,” Keller said. “I just wanted to get a win for the team to hopefully move to the next round. I was just mixing (my pitches) up and trying to pitch backwards to keep them off balance.”

The most danger Keller ran into was the top of the third inning, in which he loaded the bases, but with two outs, he was able to get out of the jam and preserve the shutout. The rest of the way, no more than two Lawrence County batters reached base per inning, and Keller was able to keep his pitch count economical.

“I talked to him after every inning to see how he was feeling, and he never once gave me any indication we were going to pull him,” Snider said. “He was in it for the long haul. Now, if his pitch count would have gotten up, of course we would’ve gotten him out, but he’s a senior. He wanted it, and he went and got it.”

Northeast Lauderdale, meanwhile, managed just three hits, and its only run came in the bottom of the fourth inning. With bases loaded, junior left fielder Dalton Rogers went the other way on an outside fastball, hitting a sacrifice fly into right field to score Duncan Ziller, who was courtesy running for Luke Harper. Lawrence County didn’t even attempt to make a play at home, conceding the run and giving the Trojans a 1-0 lead.

“The first pitch he gave me was an outside curveball, and I was sitting on fastball, because I knew I had to get the runner in, so I wanted something I could get out of the infield,” Rogers explained.

From there, Keller did the rest of the work, keeping Lawrence County off the scoreboard the final three frames.

“It was nerve-wracking, but I’m just glad we got the win and got it done,” Keller said of pitching with such a small lead. “Now we have to get it done on Monday.”

Snider even admitted he never would have thought a single run would be enough to give his team the victory.

“Me and (assistant) coach (Tyler) Vick talked about it before the game,” Snider said. “We said we were going to need eight runs to win, because of the way they swing it, but that’s baseball. It’s a crazy sport, and it worked out for us tonight.”

Still, Snider kept his players in the huddle following the game a bit longer than normal, emphasizing the importance of having a better offensive showing in Monday’s elimination matchup.

“We can get very complacent at times,” Snider said. “I don’t know if we thought we were going to come out and hit today, but we were very complacent at the plate. We didn’t attack very well, and that’s what I talked to them about. You have to attack and have a little swag about you, and we didn’t do that at the plate. We kind of went through the motions a little bit, and we have to find ourselves at the plate again.”

Rogers echoed his coach’s words after the game.

“He was telling us we won, but that wasn’t good enough, and we need to bring it Monday and hit the ball a lot more, because that team can swing it really well,” Rogers said.

First pitch is scheduled for 6 p.m. Monday at Lawrence County.