I’m not here to sugar coat things, and I’m not going to say it’s all rainbows and butterflies for our area teams this week. Things are about to get real for the teams left in the MHSAA baseball playoffs.
Typically, the third round is when things start to get interesting with compelling matchups, and this year isn’t any different.
Purvis-East Central, Oak Grove-Gulfport and Hattiesburg-South Jones. All three of those matchups seem like they belong in the south state round of the postseason. Each series are completely winnable for our area teams, but it’s also very, very losable.
Starting with the 4A matchup, Purvis and East Central are a combined 45-8 on the season. Both teams have four losses in 2018, while Purvis has one more (23) win than East Central (22). Both pitching staffs have been dominant all season, so something has to give, right? The Tornadoes have played slightly better defense than the Hornets and they’ve hit slightly better, too.
But, we’re deep in the playoffs so I don’t like to look at statistics too much. To me, the most important variable at this point of the season is how will a team handle the situation it’s in? Will the players be focused and locked-in or will the moment be too big for them?
I think the Purvis players proved a do-or-die moment wasn’t too big to handle when it handed St. Stanislaus a 10-run defeat Monday.
Switching to the next two series, both Oak Grove and Hattiesburg will face off against familiar postseason faces. The Warriors lost to the Admirals in last year’s 6A South State Series, while Hattiesburg has beaten the Braves in the last two postseasons since moving down to 5A.
The Braves, however, gave Hattiesburg all it could handle in the second round last season, and most of the team is back to try and knock off Hattiesburg this season.
The one big thing that bothered me about last year’s Tigers team was I thought they played like they expected to be in the state championship again. I’ve written that in the paper and said it on the Podcast before, so my thought process from a year ago shouldn’t be new to anybody.
This season, however, I can tell these players are on a mission. I’m sure Hattiesburg would have liked to make it back to the state championship last season, but now that we’re nearly 365 days removed from the disappointment, it might not have been a bad thing when talking about the 2018 Tigers.
Oak Grove will have its hands full with Gulfport once again. It was an exciting south state series in 2017, and Gulfport has nearly everybody back for another run to the 6A State Championship. The Warriors, on the other hand, have had a lot of growing pains this season. It seems they’ve weathered the storm and they’re clicking at the right time.
While Oak Grove fans will recognize most of the Gulfport players from last season, Gulfport fans won’t recognize too many Oak Grove players. That’ll make this third-round series fun to watch.
The third round will be difficult for our area teams, but it’ll be a fun one nonetheless.
