The West Greene baseball team earned a statement win on Thursday night, and showed that it is ready to make a deep postseason run in the coming weeks.
The Buffaloes played host to the No. 8 ranked team in Class 3A, Knox Carter, and picked up a 4-3 win less than a week ahead of the start of the district tournament.
“This is a big-time win for us,” West Greene coach Adrian Sauceman said. “Carter is ranked in the state, and that guy they started on the mound is their number one. He’s been straight shoving it on people all year. I’m very pleased with the way we attacked this game. If we can play like this there isn’t anybody we are going to see the rest of the way that we can’t beat. Games like this show you that.”
Things will not get any easier for West Greene as they take on Elizabethton, ranked No.7 in 3A, on Friday and the Buffs finish the regular season with Class 4A Morristown East.
“We’ve talked about these games for a while, but we don’t schedule games to get beat. We are going to play three good teams, and we want to win these games to have some momentum going into the postseason,” Sauceman said.
Both teams did all their scoring in the third inning, and that started with a three-run side from the Hornets.
A walk and a hit batter put runners aboard for Jeremiah Evans who lofted a sacrifice fly into center field to score the day’s first run. Next Luke Burnett bounced a ground-rule double over the left-field fence to push the lead to 2-0.
Burnett scored from second when Trey Painter ripped a ground ball down the third-base line.
The Buffaloes were undeterred by the 3-0 hole and immediately went to work. Ethan Carpenter led off the bottom of the third inning with a slow bouncer to the left side. Third baseman Chandler Bowman charged and fielded it, but his throw missed the target which allowed Carpenter to reach second.
Jayden Cox laid down a bunt and took advantage of another error to put two on the base path for the Buffaloes. With two outs and two strikes Braden McCamey smacked a line drive into right field that pushed across both runners.
Jhonen Bath tied the game at 3-3 when he burned the defense with a double to the deepest part of the left-center gap.
Brandon Hunter put West Greene in front when he fired a shot past the second baseman that knocked in courtesy runner Luke Heck from second base.
“That was a great inning,” Sauceman said. “It doesn’t always work out that you immediately respond to a big inning, but today it did. I looked over at their dugout and I don’t know that they expected that. We talk about responding to adversity, and these guys said ‘so what’, and just went out and played the next inning.”
The Hornets did not make things easy on West Greene and put the tying run on third base three times over the next four innings, but each time West Greene escaped unscathed.
In the fourth inning McCamey struck out Evans with the bases loaded.
In the sixth inning Cox took over on the mound for West Greene and got off to a shaky start. He loaded the bases with two walks and a hit batter, but he managed to work out of the tight spot. It started with a passed ball on strike three that eliminated Kingston Griph. With the ball rolling away Bowman took off for the dish. Bath got the ball back to Cox in time to tag the runner before he scored. Cox struck out the next Hornet to end the scare.
In the top of the seventh the game ended with a runner on third when Cox struck out Bowman with a breaking ball that buckled his knees.
“We got some big Ks in some big spots tonight,” Sauceman said. “Jayden is a sophomore, and we have tried to ease him as the year has progressed. But he also has the nastiest stuff on the team. We have tried to work him in in some bigger spots, and I don’t know that you’re going to get a bigger spot than tonight. If he can be an effective third guy in the postseason that can be huge for us.”
West Greene had chances to add to the lead but left the bases loaded in the fifth and sixth innings.
At the plate McCamey was 2-for-2 with two RBIs and two walks. He also earned his 100th career hit. Carpenter was 2-for-3 and scored a run. Bath had a double with an RBI. Brandon Hunter also knocked in a run.
On the mound McCamey earned the win in five innings of work. He had eight strikeouts, five walks and two hits allowed. Cox threw two innings with four strikeouts, three walks and no hits allowed.
