No one on Lawrence High’s baseball team realized just how well junior Aaron Madill had pitched until the Lions saw the box score afterward.

The junior tossed a two-hit shutout against Manhattan High and the Lions earned their third consecutive berth to the Class 6A state tournament after they downed the Indians, 1-0, Tuesday night at Ice Field.

It’s hard to blame the Lions for not realizing just how effective Madill had been. The plays they made in the field were much more attention-grabbing.

Senior center fielder Rob Scott’s diving grab in the third inning surely saved a double, maybe a triple. Shortstop Chris Johnson and first baseman Andy Flory went parallel to the ground, too, and showed that they weren’t afraid of getting some dirt on their uniforms.

Even Madill was surprised to learn that he had allowed just two hits, struck out four and didn’t allow a batter past second base after the first inning.

“I don’t even know what I did,” Madill said with an aw-shucks shrug of his shoulders. “All I know is that we’re going to state.”

Anything less than a trip to the state tournament  and maybe a state title  would have been a disappointment for Lawrence (16-6), coach David Petry said.

“That’s been the goal we set from day one,” he said. “These kids have played with tremendous pressure on them all year. They were third at state last year and returned 14 players from that team this year.

“Now they’re just playing baseball and going out there and having a good time.”

It wasn’t all peachy for Lawrence, though. The Lions trailed Topeka 1-0 until they broke the Trojans for six runs in the fifth inning.

McManness used his head, literally, to get things started for Lawrence. He led off by swinging at a third strike. But the catcher dropped the ball and as McManness ran to first base, he was hit in the helmet by the ball and it bounced into foul territory. McManness advanced to second.

Two batters later, senior left fielder Derek Bailey ripped a two-RBI double to the left field wall and gave Lawrence a lead it would not relinquish. In fact, the Lions scored four more runs in the fifth inning and sent 11 batters to the plate.

Petry said it was a matter of his team making adjustments.

“After we had seen him a few innings we recognized that his curve ball was dropping before it got to the plate,” he said. “We had been standing back in the box, but we told our kids to move and make some changes and we started hitting the ball.”

In the nightcap against Manhattan, the Lions got all the offense they would need in the first inning.

With the bases loaded and one out, Scott watched as ball four sailed by him and Bailey strolled home for what would be the game’s only run. Indian pitcher Andrew Biambrone struck out the next two batters  he totaled seven strikeouts  to end the inning.

This game was a rematch of last year’s sub-state finals in Manhattan, which saw the Lions defeat the top-seeded Indians and earn a trip to the state playoffs.

Scott said that was something that Lawrence talked about before Tuesday’s game, and Petry added that Manhattan probably used it as motivation.

“I’m sure that’s something that their coach told them before the game,” he said. “We beat them at their place last year to go to state and I’m sure that they would have liked nothing better than to have done that to us this year.

“It just didn’t work out for them.”