GRAND CHUTE – Middleton senior pitcher Shane Adler is dangerous in most situations already, but hand him a sizable lead like the one his offense gave him early on Tuesday afternoon, and he showed he’s even more deadly.

The 6-foot, 3-inch junior righthander pitched five scoreless innings with a sizable lead as the Cardinals offense took advantage of nine Janesville Craig errors to roll to a 9-3 WIAA Division 1 state quarterfinal victory at Time Warner Cable Field at Fox Cities Stadium.

“When you draw the ‘visitors’ (spot on the scoreboard), you hope to get the first strike,” Middleton coach Tom Schmitt said. “The scenario we’ve been running lately, everyone is doing something to help us out. Some guys have an off day – that happens in high school baseball –  but other guys are there to pick them up.”

“When you get a dominating performance out of your pitcher, you should be OK when you get three or four, but the guys added even more.”

The win puts the Cardinals (21-6) into the second WIAA Division 1 state semifinal of the night later tonight against either Sun Prairie – another Big 8 conference foe – or Bay Port at 8 p.m.

Three errors in the first, two errors in the third and three more in the fourth all lead to runs. With the big inning coming in the fourth for Middleton with RBI singles by Brooks Braga and Romie Ripp.

“Coming in, our mindset was to not put guys on base and make plays defensively and I thought we could play with the if we did that,” Craig coach Victor Herbst said. “You commit that many errors and put that many guys on – even in a regular season game, let alone at this level – we did not give ourselves a chance to win.”

Adler rolled through the fifth inning, allowing just three hits and striking out six by that time before Schmitt had seen enough and decided to save him for the night’s semifinals.

With the help of a defense that sniped a run out at the plate to end the first inning and committed no errors in the game, Adler had everything working for him.

“Our defense was amazing today,” Adler said. “That’s the best I’ve ever seen our defense play.

“It was pretty special for a pitcher like me because I can just go and throw strikes because I knew the defense behind me was going to make a play.”

After the first tournament victory for the Cardinals since the 2003 season in which they won the Division 1 state title, Schmitt preached not to be satisfied with this win and be ready to go after two more.

“We jumped on them early in this one and hopefully we can come out and do the same in the next one,” Adler said. “We know we have to come out, play defense and our pitchers just have to throw strikes.”

FULL GAME STATS