Bigger contrasts don’t exist, and this one couldn’t have been more effective for North Rowan in the Cavaliers’ 5-2 win Friday night.

West Wilkes’ batters, after chipping away at North ace Moore’s steady diet of fastballs, found themselves in a position to tie their second-round 2A state baseball playoff game in the top of the seventh inning.

After West tallied back-to-back hits against the weary fireballing lefty, North head coach Bill Kesler headed to the mound. He called not for Brandon Doby, another hard thrower who had been throwing, but for Goodman.

“It surprised me when he came to me. I wasn’t expecting it because he had Doby warming up,” Goodman said. “I’ve really never been in a clutch situation like that. I just had to come on and relax.”

Kesler’s reasoning was simple.

“That’s a big change when you go from Daniel’s fastball to Phillip’s knuckleball,” Kesler said. “He’s worked for it. He deserved to get the chance.”

Goodman stared down at Blackhawk Britt Harris and actually delivered two fastballs, both of which were fouled straight back. Harris dug in again and swung at nothing as the ball finally floated into Brad Canipe’s mitt.

West’s final shot, Josh Huffman, got nothing but knucklers. He watched a fluttering strike, took a ball, swung wildly, took a second ball and then fanned on Goodman’s next oh-so-tantalizing offering.

“I’ve been working on them for a couple of years,” Goodman said. “They worked pretty well last year and then I worked some more in the fall and it’s been real good this year.”

By not knuckling under the pressure, Goodman grabbed his first save of the season and made a winner of Moore, who struggled to improve to 10-2.

Moore pitched four innings in Tuesday’s 11-1 win over first-round foe North Henderson but needed only 61 pitches to get the job done. Instead of resting, he entered the West Wilkes game under plenty of pressure — the Blackhawks knocked North out in the second round last season in a game Moore didn’t start because of first-round action.

West Wilkes’ offense quickly discovered that Moore wasn’t the same pitcher who got 10 of 12 outs via the K on Tuesday. In the first inning, Moore walked two and escaped. He walked two more in the third and again survived without a run scoring.

Moore allowed singles to open the fourth inning and had runners at second and third with one out. But Wilkes squandered its best scoring chance to that point when a curveball fooled Huffman for a strikeout and Jimmy Walker’s hard liner made its way directly to Nick Childers in center field.

“We had him on the ropes a couple of times,” West head coach Craig Church said. “A hit here, a hit there, this might be a little different.”

A pair of errors helped the Blackhawks finally score. Brad Faw led off the fifth with a single and moved to second when Moore made a high throw to first on Brent Miller’s bunt attempt. Erik Mowery’s error at second base left them loaded, and after two strikeouts, Moore threw a wild pitch to plate Faw with the game’s first run.

After North tied it in the bottom of the fifth, West worked Moore for two more walks and a single in the sixth, leading to Miller’s deep sacrifice fly to make it 2-1.

Again, Moore escaped the one-out, bases-loaded jam allowing only one run. But he needed some help on a night when he walked a season-high six batters, surrendered a season-high six hits and struck out eight, his second lowest total this year in a full start and only the third time he’s had fewer than 10 Ks.

“I planned to take Daniel out after the sixth inning and he said, ‘If we go up, can I go back in?’” Kesler said. “Probably I made the wrong decision, but he’s done so much for us.”

This time, Moore’s most important job was set-up man. Show West Wilkes the 80 mph fastballs and let the Hawks flail helplessly at a 60-mph knuckler.

It proved to be a combo that couldn’t be beat.