By BRIAN TORTELLA

Correspondent

On X @tortreports

SWEDESBORO — Traveling 45 minutes south on Route 295, Northern Burlington’s Cole Marchetti knew the odds were stacked against him and his entire team to pull off an improbable upset over state-ranked No. 8 Kingsway. 

Maybe — just maybe — that was exactly the kind of fuel the Greyhounds needed to accomplish the improbable. No. 26 seed Northern Burlington’s magical run continued Wednesday as they defeated second-seeded Kingsway, 10-3, in the quarterfinal round of the 50th Joe Hartmann Diamond Classic.

“It was a great team win, first of all,” Marchetti said. “They were the better seed, they were the No. 2 seed. We are the late seed, but we just came out ready to play. I just got ahead of hitters and made some key pitches and let my defense work. We have that underdog mentality. Delsea is obviously a great team, but we’re just going to continue to do what we do, and hopefully we get a win.”

The Greyhounds advance to Saturday’s semifinals, where they’ll take on No. 6 Delsea Regional, which scored a 6-5, walkoff win over No. 30 Washington Township on Wednesday in Franklinville. The other semifinal features No. 4 Cherry Hill West visiting top-seeded Gloucester Catholic

Marchetti, a sophomore, pitched a four-hitter, striking out eight batters in 5 1/3 innings. Jordan Gilligo fanned three and allowed just one hit in relief.

While Marchetti certainly shined on the mound, his performance swinging the bat was one to remember. He went 3-for-4 with a walk and three RBIs. Perhaps an even more impressive performance hitting performance than Cole’s was fellow sophomore Liam Velit, who went 5-for-5 with an RBI and three runs scored. Northern Burlington jumped out to a 3-0 lead in the first inning then extended that lead to 6-0 in the top of the fifth.

Kingsway rallied to cut the lead in half in the bottom of the sixth, but the Greyhounds put the game away with four runs in the top of the seventh.

“We weren’t expecting to win this one,” said Velit. “But, we got the bats going last night against New Egypt. We do well under pressure, and when we get the bats going, anything can happen. We’re going to keep going at them, (we’re the) underdogs.”

Underdogs they surely have been for the majority of the tournament and that won’t change for the semifinal round as they’ll take on red-hot Delsea — winners of 16 straight games and No. 5 in this week’s nj.com Top 20 poll — on Saturday. Northern Burlington coach Gene Darling remains optimistic, and his mentality remains the same heading into the upcoming tilt. 

“We knocked off a couple good teams coming into it,” said Darling. “Nothing changed with the approach. Cole was ready on the mound. Cole has been in the closing role for us this year so far, but with nine games in ten days, we had to turn him into a starter. He’s kind of changed a lot of what we’ll do now moving forward. We scored some early runs that took the pressure off us and put it on the higher seed.”

WHAT’S NEXT: Northern Burlington travels to Delsea for the semifinal round, Time TBD.  Kingsway travels to Washington Township on Thursday at 4 p.m.