(Story by Marco Stoovelaar)
  French and Croatian teams in semi-finals CEB Cup
Nederlands
  ROUEN / CHARTRES (France) -
The two teams coming from France and from Croatia have reached the semi-finals of the CEB Cup-tournament in France.
And with that, there are three possibilities for Sunday's final.
It will be either an all-French final, an all-Croatian final, or a French-Croatian final.
On Friday (June 3), the two French teams ended in first place of their respective pools.
Rouen Huskies remained unbeaten in Pool B by winning big against Zurich Barracudas (Switzerland), 11-1.
Nada Split from Croatia won 8-5 vs. KNTU Elizavetgrad (Ukraine) to finish in second place.
In Pool A, Les Barracudas Montpellier handed Olimpija Karlovac its first loss, winning 8-7 to finish in first place, while the Croatians therefore ended up in second place.
As a result, Montpellier and Split will meet on Saturday in the first semi-final in the early afternoon (1:30 PM) in Rouen.
That game will be followed in the late afternoon(5 PM) by the match-up between Rouen and Karlovac.
On Friday, Rouen led only 2-1 against Zurich in the top of the fourth inning.
But hereafter, the French squad scored three runs in each of the next three innings en route to a mercy-rule victory.
Rouen collected 12 basehits, including three by Jonathan Jaspe, who also batted in three runs.
Montpellier trailed 6-3 after three innings against Karlovac, then scored five runs in the next two at bats to take an 8-6 lead.
Karlovac outhit the French, 11-10.
There were eleven defensive errors in this game, six by Karlovac.
Nada Split trailed 3-1 after five innings against Elizavetgrad, then scored three runs in the sixth at bat and rallied for four runs in the eighth inning.
The Ukrainian squad outhit the Croatians, 13-12, including three hits by Roman Boiko and Denys Brechko.
Boiko also batted in three runs.
For Split, all nine starting players hit at least one basehit.
The third day of the tournament started with a 6-2 win for Minsk (Belarus) against Vienna Wanderers (Austria).
Minsk scored three runs in the first inning, led only 3-2 after six at bats, but then added three more runs.
It was the third game today in which the winning team was outhit by its opponent, 10-7.
Andrew Oberthaler went 3-for-4 for the Austrian team.
Pitchers Yauheni Kurhun (Minsk) and Ryoma Watanabe (Vienna) both went the distance, respectively throwing nine and eight innings.
(June 3)
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