Photo by Andrew Grimm Steubenville ace Cooper Blackburn throws during Tuesday’s Division II East District sectional contest against Carrollton.

STEUBENVILLE — With two outs in the top of the seventh inning, veteran Big Red head coach Fred Heatherington walked to the mound to talk to his ace, Cooper Blackburn, who had just fired two pitches outside of the zone.

“When I went out and talked to him, he said he was getting a little tired,” Heatherington said. “I just told him to battle and get back in the count.”

Blackburn did just that, coming back to get the final out and close out a complete game shutout as No. 7 seed Big Red advanced with a 1-0 win over visiting Carrollton, the No. 11 seed, in Division II East 2 District sectional action.

To go with his four strikeouts without issuing a walk, Blackburn provided the game’s only RBI with a sac fly in the bottom of the third inning for what ended up being the winning run.

“When you’ve got a guy throwing strikes and working quick like Cooper did, he was throwing strikes and around the plate the whole game, it lets the defense work,” Heatherington said. “Cooper was a bulldog.

“Man, what a game.”

After an up and down season during which his club battled a lot of adversity, getting the program’s 37th sectional title and first since 2019 when Steubenville (14-10) went to the regional tournament meant a lot to the veteran skipper.

“Man, am I happy for these guys,” Heatherington said. “We went through a lot of adversity this year, we needed this. We needed a tournament win.”

Blackburn’s gem was his second-consecutive complete game shutout as he fired a five-inning shutout of Edison in Friday’s final tune up before the tournament.

After a scoreless first two and a half innings, catcher Zach Smith led off the bottom of the third with a single, moved to second on what proved to be a costly error and then to third on a passed ball before Blackburn’s shot into right was caught deep enough to bring him home.

“We took advantage of their mistake and that’s what you’ve got to do in the tournament,” Heatherington said. “You’ve got to play flawless and you’ve got to take advantage of the other team’s mistakes and that’s what we did.”

Smith finished with two of Big Red’s four hits in the game.

On the other side, Carrollton’s Cadyn Smith was nearly as good as Blackburn to give his team a chance, fanning three in his six innings.

“Coming in we both had been playing really well and Blackburn threw really well for them,” Carrollton head coach Brian Connelly said. “We out-hit them, but we couldn’t get a guy past second base. They did a great job of keeping us off the bags.

“In the playoffs everything is magnified, every pitch, every out. If you leave a guy on base, it means something, you don’t get a bunt down, it means something, you make an error, it means something, and you can see that in a 1-0 game like this.”

Big Red moves on to face No. 1 seed Indian Valley at a neutral site on Monday. The Braves defeated No. 19 seed Union Local, 14-4, in its sectional final.

The teams met twice in the regular season, each winning on the other’s home field.