Suppan Seizes Moment for Crespi in 4-2 Win : High school baseball: Pitcher hits home run, strikes out five of six batters after Ocean View pulls to within one run.

Ocean View High’s Mike Bellovich did the worst thing he could have done against Jeff Suppan: He hit a home run, pulling the Seahawks to within one run of Crespi.

At that point, something inside Crespi’s ace right-hander clicked. Suppan struck out five of the last six batters and hit a home run on the first pitch he saw, leading the Celts to a 4-2 victory in a Southern Section Division I quarterfinal Friday at Huntington Beach.

The victory was Crespi’s 17th in a row, and it propelled the Celts into a semifinal against Esperanza on Tuesday at Blair Field in Long Beach. Crespi (27-2) is trying to become the first No. 1-seeded team to win a major division championship since 1970.

Suppan made sure the quest lasted at least one more game.

“I don’t know what that was,” Suppan said of his burst at the end. “It must have been something sent from God.”

Catcher Casey Snow said: “He really took it to the next level. It pumps me up when he is throwing like that.”

It wasn’t as if Suppan (11-1) needed to improve too much. Through five innings, he had allowed only three hits and one run and he had struck out six. But Crespi was clinging to a 3-1 lead when Bellovich, Ocean View’s 6-foot-1, 210-pound, Pepperdine-bound catcher, ripped Suppan’s first pitch of the sixth inning over the left-field fence.

“That looked like a bit of a wake-up call,” said Crespi Coach Scott Muckey, whose team is ranked third in the state by Cal-Hi Sports and 16th in the nation by USA Today.

Ocean View’s Miles Hughey had the misfortune of following Bellovich to the plate. Suppan struck him out on a high fastball that Hughey guessed was probably in the high 80-m.p.h. range. Suppan then struck out Jeff Buchanan and Eric Williams looking.

“He knew he had to shut down our offense,” Hughey said. “He couldn’t let us start a rally.”

Suppan gave himself some insurance by hitting his 11th home run of the season, extending his school record, in the seventh. He was three for three.

In the bottom of the inning, he struck out the final two batters, getting Steve Rivera looking at a nasty curve. It was one of the few curves Suppan threw in the late innings, when his fastball was popping.

“If they can’t hit it, I’m just going to keep throwing it,” Suppan said.

The Celts jumped ahead against left-hander Justin Brunette (6-5) in the third inning. With two out and Gus Jordt at second base, Snow ripped a two-strike pitch down the third base line for a run-scoring single. Snow later scored on a throwing error, giving Crespi a 2-0 lead.

The Seahawks (22-9) scored a run on back-to-back hits in the bottom of the inning, but Crespi took a 3-1 lead with a run on Kyle Carden’s sacrifice fly in the fifth. Bellovich’s seventh homer of the season was all Ocean View could muster after that.

“You have to have some luck to win in the playoffs,” Ocean View Coach Steve Barrett said. “Ours ran out when (Suppan) took the mound.”