St. Aloysius has dodged a bullet. Now all that stands between it and a shot at a second consecutive state championship are a hurdle and a roadblock.

The Flashes head to Nanih Waiya on Friday for Game 1 of a second-round Class 1A playoff series, with Game 2 set for Saturday at Bazinsky Field. The winner advances to the semifinals against either Cathedral — which beat St. Al twice in the regular season — or Weir.

After dispatching pitching ace Mitchell Wooten and Edinburg in round one, Nanih Waiya poses a much different challenge for St. Al.

The Warriors (16-6) average nearly 10 runs per game and have shown a knack for getting extra base hits. They’ve hit 26 home runs and 43 doubles. Dominique Carter leads the team with a .490 average and 11 home runs, despite playing only 15 games. Austin Swart has six homers and 37 RBIs.

Swart is also the team’s top pitcher, with a 1.95 ERA and 82 strikeouts in 46 2/3 innings.

“They score a lot of runs and swing the bats well. You slow them down offensively and you’re in good shape,” St. Al coach Clint Wilkerson said. “All of our pitchers are going to have to work the lower half of the zone and get ground balls.”

While Nanih Waiya cruised to a two-game sweep of Mount Olive in the first round, winning 2-1 and 15-0, St. Al (16-7) had to scrape itself off the mat to survive. It lost Game 1 to Edinburg, then got a pair of shutouts from Reed and Stephen Evans to advance.

The comeback, tough as it was, gave the Flashes momentum heading into round two. The Evans brothers threw a total of 13 scoreless innings, with Stephen Evans pitching a three-hitter in Game 3.

“The teams that are mentally tough are the ones that win baseball games. I think the guys know that and take pride in the fact they’re tougher between the ears than the people they’re going to play,” Wilkerson said.

Not everything was rosy for the Flashes against Edinburg, though. They scored 10 runs in a Game 2 blowout and just six total in the other two games. They had several chances to blow open Game 3, but left 11 runners on base and ended up scratching out a 3-0 victory.

Besides a simple desire to execute like the team that won last year’s Class 1A championship, Wilkerson said the Flashes need to score a lot of runs to keep up with a potent offensive team like Nanih Waiya.

“We didn’t get runners on early in innings. We waited until there were two outs to get rallies going and that’s tough to do,” Wilkerson said of the Edinburg series. “We’ve got to score more than 16 runs to win this series. Our goal is to score eight runs a game.”