Baseball: Orange Lutheran’s Cole and Norco’s Hobgood set to face off

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Another game worth watching Friday is Norco against Orange Lutheran in a Southern Section-Toyota Division I quarterfinal at Hart Park in Orange. Call this one, power vs. power.

The Lancers are set to start UCLA-bound right-hander Gerrit Cole, who packs a 90-plus mph fastball and will go very high in the draft next month. Norco is led offensively by junior Matt Hobgood, who has committed to Cal State Fullerton and is hitting .488 with 15 home runs and 42 RBIs. Hobgood, who is 6 feet 4 and 240 pounds, launched a tape-measure game-tying homer in a 5-2 first-round victory over visiting Saugus.

Norco then knocked off a pretty good Thousand Oaks team in the second round, 5-3, though the Lancers committed six errors that led to four unearned runs.

Hart Park has college-sized dimensions, so getting the ball over the fence usually requires a mighty swing, but when you have someone who throws as hard as Cole does, just getting the ball on the bat might do the trick.

-- Dan Arritt