Coach Whitey Meadows’ Mooresville club defeated South Rowan 13-2 in eight innings at South Rowan High School Thursday night to sweep a best-of-three first-round Area III playoff series. It was the second time Mooresville had won by the 10-run lead rule.

Mooresville (14-12), the No. 14 seed, won the opening game 13-3 in seven innings at Mooresville High School on Wednesday.

Fifteenth-seeded South closed out its season with a 7-18 mark.

Mooresville will take on third-seeded Rowan County (16-9) in a best-of-five second-round series that starts Monday night at Newman Park.

“I feel like it will be a good matchup. I’m looking forward to it. I wish it was a four-out-of-seven. I would like to start Saturday night, if we could,” said Meadows. “I feel like Rowan would like to go four-out-of-seven.”

Rowan and Mooresville had close regular-season games. Rowan won an early season 10-inning game by 3-2 at Newman Park, then edged the Moors 4-3 at Mooresville late in the season.

“We’ve really started coming around the last two nights, getting back to early season performances,” said Meadows. “We hit the ball. They (South) made a few errors at crucial times, but we got a few good base hits at crucial times.”

Mooresville had 14 hits each night with six going for extra bases.

“Last night (Wednesday), we had 12 RBIs. We didn’t have that many RBIs tonight, because they made a few errors tonight that hurt (Jonathan) Brooks, but we’ll take them,” said Meadows.

Right-hander Jeremy Sherrill (3-1) went the distance on the mound for Mooresville, pitching a five-hitter, walking two batters and striking out four. He was in trouble only in the fifth inning when South scored its two runs.

Brooks (1-3) worked the first 7 1/3 innings for South, giving up 13 hits. South’s five errors led to five unearned runs.

“Sherrill has given us, the last four times he’s pitched, three great efforts,” said Meadows. “He really pitched a good ballgame tonight.”

South coach Allen Wilson was disappointed his team didn’t play better the final two nights of the season, but satisfied with the progress made during the summer.

“We did not play well in the field. That’s what frustrated me most,” said Wilson. “I thought Brooks was out there pitching his butt off and we were kicking it around and throwing it around. You just can’t do it in the playoffs against any team. And they’re swinging the bats right now. The last two nights they’ve gotten like 28 hits on us, some hard,some not.

“Overall we had a good year. ... I thought we made some good strides, but we’re still not there. We’ve got a lot of work to do. But it was a nice starting point for us, at least.”

Wilson took over the South coaching duties this season.