By  Jon Akre

605 Sports

SIOUX FALLS — Luke Koepsell’s complete-game outing propelled Howard to a Class B quarterfinal win over Platte-Geddes/Dakota Christian/White Lake, 4-1, on Friday night at Ronken Field.

Koepsell threw all seven innings, allowing seven hits, two walks, and one earned run while striking out four batters.

“I don’t know if I had my best stuff overall, but I scrambled a lot and, you know I’d walk a guy but then the guys behind me would make a spectacular play behind me,” Koepsell said. “Seemed like whenever we needed that big out, someone would make a play.”

The defense played a major part in the Tigers win, finishing the win with zero errors and recording plenty of first pitch outs to limit Koepsell’s pitch count.

“If our whole pitching staff throws strikes, we know we have one of the best defenses in the state,” Koepsell said. “So if we throw strikes and make them put it in play, the defense will do the rest and that’s what I did today.”

Offensively, the bats may not have had their best game, but did just enough against one of the best pitchers in the state, Caden Oberbroekling.

“We’ve seen him in the past,” Koepsell said of Oberbroeckling. “We played him in the summer a few years ago and he no-hit us. So we knew what we had in store with him. He’s a great pitcher, he throws hard, has a good breaking ball, but we just had to battle.”

Howard battled early in the game and got on the board first, scoring two runs in the home half of the 1st inning after back-to-back RBI singles from Luke and Kolt Koepsell.

Howard found gold again in the third inning with the help of a PGDCWL error that plated another run.

Up 3-1, they scored a final run in the fifth inning off yet another Honker error.

In total, the Tigers racked up 7 hits, with two hits by Jackson Remmers to lead the charge.

Karsyn Feldhaus, Colby Claussen, Luke and Kolt Koepsell, as well as Kingsten Feldhaus tallied one hit apiece in the win.

For PGDCWL, Oberbroekling took the loss on the mound, allowing seven hits, four walks, and four runs while striking out nine in 5.2 innings.

Tanner Dyk led the Honkers with two hits, while Jye Bailey, Joey Foxley, Kenyon Kuiper, Hayden Sprik, and Parker Bailey each collected hits in the loss.

PGDCWL ends their 2024 season with an 8-5 record.

The victory for Howard marks just the 11th game of the Tigers season. Having gone 7-1 in the regular season, the Tigers played the minimum number of games to compete in the postseason.

“We’ve got a deep pitching staff,” Howard head coach Nick Koepsell said. “We’ve only used three or four pitchers just for the simple fact that we’ve only played 10-11 games. We have guys that haven’t even thrown a pitch this year that are capable of going in there and getting outs.”

Despite the short season, game No. 12 of the Howard baseball season will be for a trip to the State B championship game Saturday at 2:30 at Ronken field in Sioux Falls.