By Kyle Goon

| The Salt Lake Tribune

Orem • An eight-run lead was enough for Lone Peak to get by — barely.

What looked to be a dominant 8-0 shutout in the Class 5A baseball playoffs got a bit dramatic as Riverton, down to its final out, scored six runs in a flurry at the end of the game. But right fielder Riley Otteson chased down a deep fly ball for the last out, finally allowing Lone Peak to slide by with a 8-6 win in the one-loss bracket.

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"Give Riverton a lot of credit — they battled back," Lone Peak coach Mike LaHargoue said. "They put the ball in some spots where we hadn’t been. But our guys eventually figured it out."

It was a late blemish on what had been a rock-solid game. The defending champs rattled off eight runs on 10 hits, burning through three Silverwolves pitchers. The Knights put an exclamation point on their effort with a home run by Michael Draper in the sixth inning and a two-run triple and subsequent score by Mitch Call in the seventh.

Starter Logan Leavitt had been hunting for a complete-game shutout. He pitched brilliantly for most of the game, going three-up, three-down in the first three innings and holding the Silverwolves to three hits in the first six.

"Logan had a whale of a game for us, and it was too bad we couldn’t get that shutout for him," LaHargoue said.

Things changed when Leavitt hit two batters and gave up a single in the seventh. He loaded the bases then walked in a run. Things didn’t immediately improve when Nathan Ouimette came on in relief: He walked in a run, then gave up a two-run double. An error on a routine ground ball allowed two more runs to score before Jordan Zymola flew out to end the game.

It was a close call for Lone Peak, which has aspirations of winning the one-loss bracket as it did in 2009.

"We like playing every day, and we believe we can come back," Draper said. "I think this game showed we got nervous, but we didn’t quit. We always are in it."

kgoon@sltrib.comTwitter: @kylegoon