Greeneville’s Will Harmon was simply terrific on the mound on Friday night in the District 2-3A Tournament at Tusculum University as he led the Greene Devils to a 10-0 win over Cherokee.
With the win Greeneville advances to Saturday’s district championship game, and secures a berth in next week’s Region 1-3A Tournament.
“I’m excited to be moving on, I don’t know that they realize how important this one was because they want to win the championship tomorrow,” Greeneville coach Andy Collins said. “But it’s baseball and anything can happen, so to secure this one was important. These guys came out and played hard. We played some small ball in the beginning, instead of hitting home runs like yesterday, and sometimes that brings out the right attitude.”
Harmon was nearly perfect on Friday as he faced the minimum of 15 batters in five innings and only needed 60 pitches to get through the game. He struck out nine, walked none and allowed two hits.
“Pretty much everything was working today, and I could feel it when I started warming up,” Harmon said. “Everything was on, and as soon I took the mound I knew it was going to be a good game. Sometimes you just get in that zone and know you can blow it by a guy, and today I was in that mood and felt confident.”
Cherokee’s Manning Brooks led off the game by bouncing a single through the left side, but before he delivered his fourth pitch of the evening Harmon and first baseman Kobe Mundy eliminated the runner with a pickoff.
In fact, both Chiefs who reached base on Friday were picked off at first by Harmon.
“Normally we just pickoff to hold a guy on the base, but today I was trying something new and it worked, I guess. I was just trying to be quicker and more natural with it,” Harmon said.
Greeneville’s offense quickly went to work and established a lead it would never relinquish in the bottom of the first.
An error allowed Carson Norris to reach safely before Maddox Bishop and Harmon walked to load the bases. Norris scored on a wild pitch before Noah Murray lasered a two-run single straight up the middle.
A pair of bunt singles by Mundy and Grayson Crosby pushed Greeneville’s lead to 4-0 and ended the day Brooks on the mound. The Chiefs did get out of the side with no further damage done.
Greeneville’s lead grew to 6-0 in the second inning. Norris walked and Bishop fired a single into the right-center gap. Norris scored when Harmon hit into groundout, and Bishop crossed when Murray hit into a two-out error.
Four runs in the bottom of the fourth allowed the Devils to go in front 10-0 and three quick outs in the top of the fifth ended the game by run rule.
Two walks put runners on the corners with two outs, and Jack Lister added to Greeneville’s lead when he beat a throw back to the plate on a double steal.
Kaine Ricker, Jeriah Griffin and Carson Quillen sent consecutive RBI singles through the left side to score the day’s final three runs.
Greeneville got nine hits from eight batters on Friday. Murray was 2-for-3 with three RBIs. Harmon was the only one not to get a hit, but he reached twice on a pair of walks.
Greeneville will be back at Pioneer Park for the district title game on Saturday at 1 p.m. It will play the winner of Cherokee and Grainger which is slated to start at 11 a.m.
