The Centre County Baseball League’s season will once again come down to the defending champion Blanchard Bees against the No. 1 seed Clarence Mounties.

Blanchard, a team that a week ago was down 2-0 to the No. 2 Pleasant Gap Peppers and facing elimination, used two home runs by catcher Wyatt Koch to win its third game in a row and complete an improbable comeback that overtook the Peppers 3 games to 2.

Now, Clarence and Blanchard will square off for the second year in a row in the bestof-five finals which are scheduled to begin tonight in Clarence.

Both of the semifinal clinchers turned on late heroics and late home runs.

At Bellefonte’s Governors Park, the Bees asserted themselves quickly in this rubber game by scoring six runs in the first four innings.

Pleasant Gap, however, struck back after a three-run homer by Jesse Martin and an RBI double by Doylan Dietrich to creep to within 6-4 going into the sixth inning.

The outburst didn’t shake Blanchard’s focus, though, as Koch struck for the second time in the top of the sixth. With a run in after an RBI single by Toner Corl, Koch came to bat with two on and two out.

He fouled off two fastballs before getting his pitch — a curveball not quite low enough or far enough outside — and he saw it all the way.

After the ball sailed far over the left-center field wall, the Bees were on top 10-4 and on their way.

“I saw the right pitch at the right time, I guess,” Koch said, “and everything else happened. The first time he threw me a fast ball and the second one was a curve ball. You never feel comfortable in a ball game, but they (the homers) gave us a little bit of a leeway there. A bit of a spring.”

Given a six-run lead, Blanchard starting pitcher Bryce Hanley and reliever Ben Briggs allowed the Peppers just two more hits and no runs as the Bees wrapped up the win and the series.

“We went down there 0-2 and frankly that was about eight games in a row we didn’t beat them (the Peppers),” Hanley said. “So you know we were thinking, ‘How can we beat these guys?’ We had Toner (Corl) on the mound in the next game and he’s our best pitcher.

“So we had confidence going into that game, and we figured that once we broke that goose-egg, it would keep coming for us.”

It did, and Blanchard will now have a shot at two CCBL championships in a row.

In Lemont, two rain delays had pushed back that semifinal series and the Ducks and Mounties were playing Game 4 with Clarence ahead 2-1.

This series had been back-and-forth with every game going down to the final innings. So it was no surprise that Game 4 went into the seventh inning with the Ducks ahead 5-4 and three outs away from a win and a tied series.

But Mountie Brandon Barnyak crashed a game-saving two-run home run to right field in the top of the inning, and then reliever Justin Taylor put out a Lemont rally in the seventh and picked up a save as Clarence hung on for a 6-5 win.

“Lemont outhit us throughout the series,” Clarence coach Rob Gavlock said. “We came up with some huge defensive plays and some clutch hitting.

“Barnyak had a walk-off single in Game 3 and the homer tonight. He was the clutch hitter in this series.”

The Mounties’ victory, along with Blanchard’s, sets up another showdown between the two in the finals.

Game 1 is scheduled for July 25 in Clarence.