McComb baseball coach Brian Eby has never been one for looking ahead. That is, until Tuesday night.
Eby began looking forward to Friday night as a chance for his Tigers to regroup and refocus following their 16-3, six-inning loss to Region 5-5A foe West Jones at McComb's Rotary Field.
West Jones battered McComb pitching for 15 hits, including two mammoth home runs, to drop the Tigers to 3-10 overall and 1-4 in the region.
“We’re starting to put it more and more together,” Eby said despite the one-sided loss. “That was a very experienced team we were playing out there.”
That experience showed in every aspect of the game. West Jones scored in five of the six innings, was more solid in the field and had the dominant pitching, led by Chase Ward. With a fastball and an assortment of breaking pitches, the right-hander mastered the Tigers en route to a no-hitter with 13 strikeouts through five innings.
West Jones came out swinging in the first inning in which the Mustangs put together five hits and took advantage of a McComb fielding error to take a 5-0 lead. The inning was highlighted by Evan Gieger’s two-run double that hit the base of the right-field fence.
After his first-inning struggles, Tigers’ starter Trey Terrell retired West Jones in the second inning on just 10 pitches.
McComb got on the board in the bottom of the second. Dominic Cotton reached on a fielding error to lead off and stole second with one out. After Marquell Carroll walked, Cotton swiped third and scored when West Jones catcher Matthew Farrar’s pickoff throw to third sailed into left field. The error cut the margin to 5-1.
Ward quickly recovered from his brief period of wildness and struck out the next two batters to end the inning.
The Mustangs got a single run in the third on Tyler Roney’s solo home run that easily cleared the high protective netting in left field to make it 6-1.
The lead went to 7-1 in the fourth on a McComb fielding error, a walk and RBI single.
West Jones threatened to add more in the fourth when it loaded the bases with one out. But Tigers’ shortstop Adrian Brown went to his left to field a grounder, then stepped on second base for the force and threw to first baseman Alex Woodall to complete the inning-ending double play.
The Mustangs, however, padded their lead in the fifth on a fielding error — the third of six McComb fielding miscues on the night — along with a single, stolen base and Farrar’s two-run double off the base of the right-field wall to make it 9-1.
West Jones put together its biggest frame of the night during a seven-run sixth inning.
The Mustangs took advantage of three more McComb errors and Derek Bynum’s two-run single to build a 13-3 lead and end Terrell’s night. The McComb right-hander worked 51/3 innings and gave up 13 runs on 14 hits. He walked four and struck out three.
West Jones capped its scoring on Jordan Foechner’s three-run home run off McComb reliever Cotton.
The shot hit the top of the Tillman Furniture building well beyond the left-center field fence for a 16-1 advantage.
After five innings without a base hit, the Tigers finally broke through on Terrell’s single to lead off the sixth.
One out later, Brown supplied McComb its only other runs of the game with a two-run home run to left-center field.
After the game, Eby expressed little concern that his team had lost focus in the lopsided loss, but added that Brown’s round-tripper showed his team’s no-quit attitude.
“These are 15- and 16-year-olds,” he said. “They’re going to lose focus.
“I’ll say this,” Eby added. “There’s no die in this team.”
The Tigers’ home-home series with the Mustangs continues Friday at West Jones.
