Tri-County baseball opens postseason with dominant win
Tri-County Academy continued their dominant season on Tuesday night, defeating Central Hinds Academy 9-1 in game one of their MAIS 4A South semifinal series.
The Rebels are in search of back-to-back MAIS 4A state titles and got one step closer to accomplishing that with a dominant pitching performance and a late-game offensive surge.
Luke Power put together a masterful outing on the mound for Tri-County, pitching 6 ⅓ innings, allowing only one run and two hits, while also striking out seven and walking only one.
“Luke Power has been our number one on the mound this season and has got us where we are now,” Tri-County Academy Head Coach RJ Barrett said. “One thing we put a huge emphasis on is pounding the strike zone because our defense is really good and doesn’t make a lot of mistakes, which has been successful for us and has led us to where we are now.”
The Tri-County offense has been prolific all season, but really found their rhythm late in the game, scoring eight of their nine runs in the final four innings.
“Once we see a pitcher through the lineup once, we really start to figure out what their tendencies are and what they like to do,” Barrett said. “The biggest thing with us is when we get in the box we want to see as many pitches as possible because we know that if we can run up their pitch count, we can really start digging into their bullpen.”
The Rebels had 12 total hits on the night, with Hayden Hunt and Peyton Patridge totalling three each, Brian Bergeron adding two, and Hayden Smith, Crews Albritton, Sawyer Pettit, and Grayson Rymer contributing a hit each.
It is always crucial to take game one of a best-of-three series and even though Tri-County was on the road, the Rebels were able to roll offensively and on the mound to take that 1-0 advantage with the series going back to Flora.
“We are the higher seed and have home field advantage in the series, but we do have to come here first in the second round, which is always tough,” Barrett said. “It’s a tough environment here, the kids all know each other and the schools are only 30 miles from each other, so being able to get game one is huge for us.”
Tri-County has plenty of championship experience on this year’s team that were key parts of last year’s MAIS 4A state title team, but have been able to avoid complacency and continue to keep their foot on the gas all season long, with hopes of a repeat state title bid.
“We always talk about just winning each day, what it takes to win each day, and what we are going to do to achieve that,” Barrett said. “In our order one through nine and even the guys on the bench, they contribute to this team. We lost three seniors from last year’s team and have three seniors this year, so our younger guys have a lot of experience on the field and have done a really good job of helping us build what we’re trying to do here.”
Tri-County will look to advance to the MAIS 4A South championship on Thursday, as they complete their series with Central Hinds Academy. Game two and three, if necessary, will be played on Thursday at Tri-County Academy, with game two of the series set to start at 4:30 PM. If the Rebels are able to advance, they would play the winner of Riverfield Academy-Amite in the MAIS 4A South championship next week.