By Stan Caldwell
stanmansportsfan.com
HATTIESBURG – It’s still early, with a lot of baseball left to be played, but right now, Oak Grove is not looking good.
The Warriors committed six errors, along with a number of other mental mistakes, and went down to an 8-5 defeat at the hands of Madison-Ridgeland Thursday night in the Rex/Adidas Deep South Classic being played across the Pine Belt this weekend.
Undefeated MRA (10-0) was certainly the class of the three teams that played Thursday at Harry Breland Field on the OGHS campus, one of four venues in the tournament, which brings 16 teams from the southern and central parts of the state to the Hattiesburg area.
The Patriots defeated West Marion 11-2 in an earlier game Thursday, so the victory over the Warriors propelled MRA into the tournament championship round on Saturday at Sumrall. Oak Grove (5-3) battles the 4-5 Trojans at 6 p.m. tonight.
“Not pretty at all,” said Oak Grove coach Chris McCardle. “We’ve got to learn to play defense.
“If we don’t make all the errors, we’re still in the ball game. That’s ridiculous. Sickening. It makes no sense to me. I know we’ve got good players who know how to play, and we’re just not at the point where we need to be right now. But we’re going to fix it.”
With Region 5-6A play opening next week and down a couple of starters due to injury, McCardle was at a disadvantage with the Warriors’ pitching, ultimately using five pitchers Thursday with varying degrees of success.
“We couldn’t really pitch it like we wanted to, because a couple of our main guys are injured,” said McCardle. “We’ve got a region game on Tuesday, so we tried to piece it together (tonight) against a really good team.
“And I thought we did OK. We had a limit of about 40 pitches for Thompson and I think he went 50-55. But we’ve got to save him and Maddox (Miller), another freshman that we used today.”
Freshman Gage Thompson got the start, and he used up most of his planned allotment of pitches in the first inning.
With one out, the Patriots loaded the bases thanks to back-to-back errors in the infield and a walk. Senior Conner Stewart delivered for MRA, smacking a single into rightfield to drive in two runs.
“I’m really pleased with where we are right now,” said MRA coach Allen Pavette. “The one thing I’ve been proud about our team is we’re finding ways to win. We’re taking advantage of other teams’ mistakes and capitalizing, and, for the most part, we’ve been pitching really well.”
That seemed to rouse Thompson (2-1), because he struck out five of the next six batters he faced, but with 54 pitches, he was done after two innings.
Oak Grove got a run back in the bottom of the first inning, when McKinley Gieger smashed MRA starter Drew Lambert’s second pitch of the game into the trees before the rightfield wall for a solo home run.
The Warriors subsequently got a runner to third after Jack Sikes singled with one out, took second on a ground out and went to third on a wild pitch. However, Lambert got a popup to end the inning.
In all, it was an effective night for Lambert (3-0), a sophomore right-hander who has already committed to Ole Miss. He gave up two runs in 4 2/3 innings, allowed five hits, struck out four and walked three.
“He can throw three pitches for strikes, he has good command and a good feel of his ball,” said Pavette. “He’s not going to overpower you, but he’s going to locate his pitches where he wants.”
The Patriots made it 3-1 in the third, when they took advantage of a leadoff walk, a steal, a single by Stewart and a successful double steal.
MRA also manufactured a run in the fourth without a hit, using another leadoff walk, a sacrifice and two wild pitches. Three more runs came home in the fifth on three walks, an error and a run-scoring single off the bat of senior Stone Blanton.
“We’re still trying to get some things figured on the infield,” McCardle said. “We just haven’t figured it out yet. But we will.”
Oak Grove managed a run in the fifth and one in the sixth and senior Drew Sell had a hand in both runs.
Sell led off the fifth with a single, stole second, went to third on Gieger’s single and scored on an RBI sacrifice fly by senior Foster Mitchell. Sell drove in the run in the sixth with a single, after Ethan Easterling reached on an error with one out.
MRA added an insurance run in the top of the seventh, with the help of two Warrior errors, and it came in handy when Oak Grove loaded the bases in the bottom of the inning with two walks and a hit batter by Patriot sophomore reliever Corey Watkins.
Another walk plated a run, but Watkins got out of it with only one more run coming in, that on a one-out grounder up the middle, with Easterling beating out the relay to allow the run to score.
“We’re still kind of young,” said Pavette. “We had two sophomores who threw tonight, a sophomore at third base, a sophomore at second base, so we’re still trying to find our pieces.
“We like coming down here. We’ve played in this tournament, I think, the last five or six years and it’s really helped us. Coach McCardle and Oak Grove have a fine program, and we love coming in here to play.”
Oak Grove will open region play on Tuesday at Meridian, with the Wildcats coming to Oak Grove next Friday.
“Just not a good game for us at all,” said McCardle. “Give their guy credit. He kept us off-balance, and that’s the way most teams have been pitching us. Our lineup is a senior group, and they know better.”
Prep Baseball Linescore
Rex/Adidas Deep South Tournament
Thursday at Harry Breland Field
Madison-Ridgeland 8, Oak Grove 5
MRA 201 121 1 – 8 6 1
OG 100 011 2 – 5 6 6
MADISON-RIDGELAND (10-0): Kaleb Lipscomb 1B; Stone Blanton 1B; Conner Stewart 2 1B; Corey Watkins 1B; John Whit Snopek 1B. WP – Drew Lambert (3-0). Also pitching – Corey Watkins.
OAK GROVE (5-3): McKinley Gieger 1B; Blake Bullock HR (solo), 1B; Foster Mitchell 1B; Jack Sikes 1B; Drew Sell 2 1B. LP – Gage Thompson (2-1). Also pitching – Maddox Miller; Derik Lomax; Patrick Smith; Reese Littlejohn.
Photos courtesy of Jesse Johnson
