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Sioux City North 4, Marshalltown 1

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Dean McArdle and Chad Piersma; Jimmy Six and T.J. Flanagan. WP - McArdle (6-1). LP - Six (11-4). 3B - McArdle. LOB - SCN 7, MHS 4.

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DES MOINES - So rare is it that a sequel lives up to the hype, the elevated expectations based solely on the unparalleled success of the original.

Did you see Marshalltown vs. Sioux City North, Part II?

Worth the price of admission, sure, but the ending left a little to be desired - for one team anyway.

Top-ranked No. 1 seed Sioux City North sent Marshalltown to first-round defeat, 4-1, in Class 4A play at the Iowa High School State Baseball Tournament at Principal Park, winning Wednesday's improbable rematch of last summer's state quarterfinal pairing in another blockbuster pitcher's duel.

North senior right-hander Dean McArdle fired the Stars into the semifinal round for just the second time in school history, while Marshalltown senior lefty Jimmy Six was on the wrong side of the Bobcats' first opening-round setback since 1995.

Six's errant throw to first base on Eric McGlauflin's two-out grounder back to the mound in the top of the fifth inning plated two runs, breaking a 1-all tie and giving Sioux City North (34-7) more than enough margin for the Stanford-bound McArdle. The Stars tacked on an insurance run in the seventh and will face another CIML Iowa Conference program - Fort Dodge (29-12) - in Friday's 6 p.m. semifinal.

"When you know that you're going to get a run or two, and three would be a bunch, and you've got to play against that kind of formula it makes it a little more challenging because you have no margin for error, you just don't," said Bobcat head coach Steve Hanson. "And when we made our mistakes they made us pay, they came back and capitalized and retained their lead and put us in a late-inning situation again. And that's really hard against a guy like (McArdle)."

Marshalltown (26-16) managed two come-from-behind victories during its run through the substate bracket, but that proved to be a lofty challenge against Sioux City North's aggressive fire-baller.

With Six on the mound in last year's state quarterfinal, Marshalltown stunned the second-ranked Stars, 2-0. McArdle, wearing No. 6 on his jersey, made the most of his second chance against Six and the 'Cats.

"It's a lot of excitement but a certain sense of relief just knowing that we were going against a guy that had won 11 games coming in," said North head coach Brian Drent. "We had a lot of confidence in our ballclub but to win 11 in the league they play in, that's awful good. We were going to have our hands full."

So did the Bobcats. McArdle struck out seven and managed to escape his only real jam in the bottom of the third inning without sustaining much damage. Three straight two-out singles by Marshalltown's Grant Bohlke, Nick Thimesch and Jordan Judkins loaded the bases for leading hitter T.J. Flanagan, who got ahead in the count and took McArdle's only walk to tie the score at 1-all.

MHS clean-up hitter and RBI leader Jarred Carlson then chopped a grounder to shortstop Damek Tomscha, who fired to first base just in time to prevent another Bobcat tally.

"That was lined up just about as perfectly as we could make it and we got one run out of the deal, and that's good," said Hanson. "It would have been nice to get a couple more."

After tying it up, MHS did not get another hit off McArdle until Allen Mann's leadoff single in the seventh. McArdle struck out the last three batters, ending the game by retiring his counterpart.

"We couldn't get any hits anywhere and that was it," Six said. "That's what we needed to win and it didn't happen tonight."

Six struck out the first three batters of the game, but one of them - Chad Piersma - reached on a dropped third strike. Piersma's courtesy runner came around to score after three straight singles by the Stars' Nick Tillo, McGlauflin and Michael Davenport.

Marshalltown knotted it up in the third, thanks to another string of consecutive singles. McArdle went 3-0 to Flanagan before battling back to a full count against the Bobcats' best hitter for average.

"I was thinking 'get a strike and hit it.' I wasn't really looking for a walk but that's what I got," Flanagan said. "I knew we needed more and we could have busted it open right there, and if we get more than one everything pressures up for them and last year comes back maybe, but we couldn't and we had to deal with it."

McArdle made that a daunting task by leading off the fifth with a single that glanced off the glove of diving first baseman Jacob Whaley. Piersma bunted courtesy runner Andrew Vereen over to second before the Bobcats intentionally walked Tomscha - a .465 hitter and the team's RBI leader.

Six got Tillo to ground out to Bohlke at second before McGlauflin, who had singled in the first, dribbled a ball back to the mound. Marshalltown's pitcher saw Vereen sprinting toward home, wheeled and threw well over Whaley's head, allowing both runners to score for a 3-1 Stars advantage.

"It just got away from me I guess," shrugged Six, who had won all three postseason games for Marshalltown. "You throw a lot of baseballs, setting your feet getting ready for the game, there was a mix-up and it happens, it's baseball.

"One bad play is not the whole game, you can come back and win the game, it's just a matter of who wants it more."

It may not have been the play that drew the curtain on Marshalltown's season, but it did put things in motion.

"If we played 6,000 games I'd want Jimmy Six on the mound 6,000 times. We got beat because we didn't swing it," said Hanson. "No one feels worse than (Six) right now. When you invest a lot it hurts to lose and we had a lot of guys who this year invested a lot. So to come here was nice but this wasn't how we envisioned it ending up.

"I'm not saying anything bad about my pitcher. He's a fabulous kid and he gave us a chance to win. If we get a couple more runs that play doesn't matter."

McArdle helped put his team out of reach by leading off the seventh with a triple down the right-field line. One out later, Tomscha shot a hard-hit ball through a drawn-in infield to plate Vereen and make it a 4-1 game.

"It feels great because it was really disappointing since we had a really talented team last year, and now that we got (Marshalltown) back there's nothing better I guess," said Tomscha. "The confidence of our team when Dean is pitching is way up there because he's Dean, he's going to Stanford, so we know we'll make plays for him and he'll strike out people for us."

The loss brought to a close the careers of six Bobcat seniors - Jordan Alley, Blake Bueghly, Patrick Sharpshair, Mann, Flanagan and Six - who helped bring in two state tournament trophies.

"It's a great reward for the work that you put in because there's no guarantees you can get here," said Hanson. "You can be real good and not get here and you can work real hard and not ever get here.

"When the smoke clears our guys are going to know that they had a good year."