Gershkoff/Auburn Post 20 manager Dave Schiappa doesn’t make a habit of being persuaded by his players. After last week, he might be a little more open to the idea.

Schiappa was talked into, or out of, two separate moves during Gershkoff’s Final Four opening win against R&R Construction on Thursday – and it paid off both times.

The first came shortly before the first pitch, as Gershkoff was going through its pre-game warm-ups. Veteran Shane O’Connell, who had missed much of the team’s post-season run after injuring his knee in the playoff opener, declared that he was ready to play and talked his was into the starting lineup. Batting leadoff to open the game, O’Connell crushed the first pitch he saw over the fence in left to give Gershkoff an early lead.

“I knew he was going to want to play,” Schiappa said. “That didn’t surprise me at all. I said last week that he would try to come back early. He did the same exact thing last year. Shane is a gamer and I knew that he wasn’t going to sit this out.”

Schiappa’s second dilemma came nine innings later. Gershkoff had built up an 8-2 and starting pitcher Dan Hopkins was still on the mound, despite throwing 120 pitches going into the bottom of the ninth. Hopkins gave up back-to-back singles to open the inning before allowing runs on a sacrifice fly and an RBI double. He recorded the second out on a fly ball to center field but served up a two-run home run over the wall in left-center against R&R’s Zach Guillette. Guillette’s blast cut Gershkoff’s lead to 8-6 and Schiappa, sensing trouble, went to retrieve Hopkins.

But a funny thing happened on his way to the mound: Hopkins waved him off. The pitcher, with his count past 135 in the game, wanted to finish what he started. Schiappa deferred to the veteran left-hander and retreated to the dugout, where he watched Hopkins strike out the next batter he faced to lock up Gershkoff’s 8-6 victory.

“I’ve never been talked out of something like that before but I did today,” Schiappa said. “I was very close to going to get him, I even started walking out there and he told me that he wanted one more out. He wouldn’t let me take him out of that game.”

“I wanted him to go back in the dugout,” Hopkins said. “Anything can happen in the playoffs and we have a very inexperienced team, so I figured that I would finish the game. I told him one more out and I’m glad that I was able to get it.”

That Schiappa trusted Hopkins and O’Connell, two key players from last year’s state championship club, is no surprise. That both got the job done shouldn’t be either. The battle-tested players know what it takes to compete at that level and relied on their experience to help carry them through.

“When I first came in I was a little hesitant,” O’Connell said. “I didn’t know if I was even going to be good enough to pinch-hit. But as I was warming up and the blood started flowing I knew that I was going to be able to play. And I knew that their pitcher liked to throw first-pitch fastballs and he threw me one letter-high. It was a perfect pitch for me to go after and good things happened.”

Hopkins’ success wasn’t based as much on the knowledge of the competition as much as it was on his knowledge of what would happen if he didn’t come through. Last year Gershkoff went the full three games in each of its playoff series and lost the Final Four opener, putting an extra burden on the team’s pitching staff.

A loss to R&R on Thursday would have forced Gershkoff to the losers’ bracket and seriously jeopardize the club’s title chances. Hopkins knew that and didn’t want to be responsible for letting his teammates down.

“If you lose then you come back and play every day for nine innings,” Hopkins said. “So if I can stay out a little longer, get the win and save the bullpen for our next game, that’s huge. It meant a lot to be able to save our pitching staff.”

In between O’Connell’s leadoff home run and Hopkins’ final strikeout, Gershkoff played a solid game.

Hopkins allowed two runs in the second, putting the team in a 2-1 hole, and the score remained there into the sixth. Mike McClarnon tied the score when he led off the top of the sixth with a solo shot to left, while a double from Anthony Pagano and RBI single from Steve Beneduce, two of Gershkoff’s youngest contributors, helped the team regain its lead.

“Beneduce was lower in the lineup for a long time but he moved up to the No. 2 spot because he’s been hitting so well,” Schiappa said. “And then we’ve got guys like Pagano who are really coming through. You have to give it to these young kids: they’re out here playing against guys that are older than them and they are stepping up to that challenge.”

Gershkoff tacked on an unearned run in the seventh and added three more in the eighth on hits by Beneduce, Hopkins, McClarnon and Jeff Diehl.

Hopkins settled in after the second inning, facing the minimum in the third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth frames. He allowed just two hits in that stretch, using a failed suicide squeeze and a double-play ball to get out of both jams, and the one batter he walked was promptly picked off first base.

“Our team played excellent defense,” Hopkins said. “And you can pitch totally different when you’re ahead. You can pound the strike zone and make the other team beat you. It’s different when you’re behind because you have to hit all your spots and don’t have much room for error. I didn’t have to worry about that today.”