Last Monday, South Rowan lost 22-1 at Central Cabarrus. One short week later, the surprising Raiders are in the Cliff Peeler Baseball Classic championship game tonight at 7 opposite familiar 4A Central Piedmont Conference foe Davie County.
South (7-10) limped into the Classic with twice as many losses as wins, burdened by a four-game losing streak and having dropped four of five games against teams in the Classic field.
If Las Vegas had handicapped the tournament on Thursday, the schools’ odds of producing the Classic champion would have looked something like this: East 2-1; Davie 2-1; West 3-1; North 5-1; Albemarle 15-1; South 30-1; Statesville 50-1; and Salisbury 100-1.
South isn’t imposing statistically. It has only three .300 hitters, hasn’t homered yet and has no pitcher with more than two wins. But here it is in the finals under first-year coach Linn Williams, further proof that high school games are still played on dirt and grass — not paper.
South’s 4-2 win over Statesville on Friday wasn’t unexpected, but its wild 8-7 victory over East in Saturday’s semifinals turned heads.
It was likely the most significant baseball victory for the Raider program since it made the state playoffs four years ago.
Veteran right-hander Tim Cook is South’s most rested pitcher and could get the title-game nod.
Davie coach Mike Herndon is expected to counter with Lonnie “Hammer” Barnes, his No. 4 starter. Herndon, whose team is ranked 10th in 4A, faces big conference matchups on Tuesday and Friday, so his hurling options are limited. But Barnes isn’t bad at all and Herndon might get an inning or two from Cody Wright, who breezed to a no-hitter on Thursday.
Davie (15-3), which looked extra sharp in beating West 6-2 on Saturday, held off South 6-4 in Mocksville in their only previous meeting.
The third-place game at 4 p.m. is a matchup of East Rowan (10-7) and West Rowan (12-7) and may have implications far beyond bragging rights.
East and West play in the same conference (3A South Piedmont) and are currently tied for third place with 7-6 league records.
While today’s Peeler matchup is obviously a “nonconference” game, it’s still a head-to-head matchup and could be used as a tiebreaker to determine a state playoff spot if the teams wind up tied in the league standings. That’s a very real possibility, as the Mustangs and Falcons split their regular-season contests and are currently deadlocked for third with 7-6 league marks.
Lefty Julian Sides (2-3) is the likely hurler for East. He beat West 7-3 recently in Granite Quarry. The Falcons won the Mount Ulla matchup 3-0 behind Jared
Barnette, but he won’t be on the hill today.
Today’s 1 p.m. fifth-place game pitted North Rowan (12-4) against Albemarle (9-5). The 10 a.m. seventh-place game was between Salisbury (2-13) and Statesville (7-13).
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