GRANITE CITY -- In the battle to determine the metro-east's large-school baseball playoff survivor, O'Fallon's quick start Thursday proved to be the difference.
The Panthers scored three times in the bottom of the first inning and pitchers Miles Quintal and Jon Levin maintained a lead the rest of the way in a 6-4 victory over Edwardsville in a Bloomington Class 4A Sectional semifinal.
"Miles was very, very good today," O'Fallon coach Jason Portz said of Quintal (9-2), who allowed eight hits and four runs in 5 2/3 innings without a walk. "He doesn't awe anybody, he's never going to. He just goes out there and competes, pitches on the edges and throws his pitches for strikes."
O'Fallon (29-9), now 13-1 in its last 14 games, will take on Moline in the sectional championship at 11 a.m. Saturday at Illinois Wesleyan University in Bloomington.
Edwardsville, which got home runs from Michael Failoni and Dane Opel to push its school-record total to 52, closed out the season 33-5 before a huge crowd of more than 500 stretching from foul pole to foul pole.
"There's not a lot of difference between these two clubs," Portz said. "That's as good a baseball game as you're going to see. There wasn't an error made in the game; there was a great deal of execution on all of our parts."
The Panthers roared out to a 4-0 lead in the first inning Saturday in their regional championship win over Belleville West. This time they put up three quick runs against Edwardsville starter Gregg Culp (9-2), a Murray State recruit whose only two losses this season came against O'Fallon.
"The early start is important," said Portz, whose team had five stolen bases and pushed across a run with a squeeze bunt. "It eases a lot of tension in your kids. I've spoken about it, that Gregg (Culp) is a kid that you have to get out and get on top of early. I felt like we had a real good approach in the first inning, and all through the game really."
First-inning singles by O'Fallon's Keith Wolf and Kyle Stanton put runners at first and third. A balk call on Culp chased home one run and a two-out, two-strike bloop single into right by Brad Taake made it 3-0.
"You never want to start off on the wrong foot," said Edwardsville coach Tim Funkhouser, who was denied a chance to record his 400th career victory. "They sprayed some balls around and put some balls in play. He missed on an 0-2 pitch and the guys flipped it out in the outfield, I guess that's good two-strike hitting."
Failoni hit a solo homer leading off the second, his sixth this season that pushed his RBI total to 61. Failoni later added a double and single.
Culp settled down after the shaky first with three hitless innings. He struck out nine in 4 1/3 innings, but was taken deep by Stanton for a two-run homer in the fifth.
That homer came after Edwardsville had cut the deficit to 3-2 on a sacrifice fly by Tyler Mikrut.
"I thought we had a good chance there, especially in the later innings," Funkhouser said. "Our guys were starting to time his breaking pitch and adjusted to that better, but we just didn't have enough today."
The Tigers battled back again in the sixth. Opel, a Missouri recruit, blasted his 18th home run deep over the fence in right to give him 62 RBIs.
Failoni followed with a double. Singles by Tim Messer and Mikrut brought in a run and Portz brought in lefty Jon Levin with two outs to face left-handed Andy Burns.
Levin got him on an infield flyout and O'Fallon added an important run in the sixth on a double by Sonnie Rollins and a squeeze bunt by Sam Summerlin.
Levin allowed a leadoff single to Zach Maggio in the seventh. With one out, Levin had to face Opel and Failoni with the tying run at the plate. He struck out both, no easy task considered they are widely considered two of the top hitters south of Chicago, to nail down the win.
"That's a credit to their pitcher," Funkhouser said. "Our guys competed all year; I love Dane Opel and Michael Failoni. Those guys flat-out compete and that's all you can ask."
Portz became emotional as he talked about Levin's effort.
"That's as clutch a pitching performance out of a senior that you can have, I think, in high school baseball," Portz said. "Those two kids have 120 RBIs (actually 123) or whatever and 24 home runs together. To come in and strike those two kids out in the bottom of the seventh inning with the tying run at the plate in the sectional semifinal with those two clubs ... that says a lot about how far Jon's come."
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