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It’s not marked off in red, and there aren’t any danger signs hanging from it.
In fact, it looks just like its counterpart, the winners’ bracket.
The losers’ bracket in any tournament isn’t a totally bad thing. At the very least, it gives a team another day of hope, a chance still to fight its way to the championship game.
Rowan County knows from experience, though, exactly how devastating an early trip into the losers’ bracket can be. At last year’s American Legion Baseball State Tournament, Rowan fought all the way to the title game before running out of gas against Caldwell County.
That puts an emphasis on Thursday’s opener at the 2001 tournament in Garner. Rowan (35-7)opens against Area II champion Wilmington (32-2) in a battle of two of the best Legion programs in the state.
“Obviously it’s a tough draw right off the bat,”said Wilmington head coach Keith Moore. “Rowan’s a quality program, rich in tradition, sort of like Post 10. When you mention American Legion Baseball in the western part of the state, they’re one of the teams that come to mind, year in and year out.”
Wilmington beat Rowan twice in the regular season the past two years, but last year in the state tournament, Rowan knocked Post 10 out of the field with a 5-4 victory.
The winning pitcher in that game was none other than Julian Sides, the likely starter Thursday. Sides allowed five hits and one earned run in 713 innings, striking out eight Wilmington batters and walking three.
This year, Sides is 6-1 with a save and has an earned run average of 3.36. His expected counterpart in the 1 p.m. game is bound for East Carolina University as soon as Wilmington’s season ends. Right-hander Darryl Lawhorn is a sparkling 10-0 with a 0.56 ERA. In 6323 innings, he’s fanned 77 batters.
Rowan has seen plenty of dominating pitching this summer, but it hasn’t always mattered. Asheboro ace Lance Cole shut down the offense with 17 Ks in Game 1 of the Area III finals, but Rowan responded the next time Cole pitched with 13 hits and 12 earned runs. Burlington and Mocksville-Davie also threw everything they could at the Rowan offense, but to no avail.
“We’ve got some good hitters,”Rowan head coach Jim Gantt said. “The last three series we’ve faced quality pitchers. We can’t be in awe of this tournament.”
Rowan’s primary concern is its defense. Gantt had the infield out for some extra ground balls this week after several breakdowns aided Asheboro.
“We’ve got to make sure we’re out there with a team that can play,”Gantt said. “We’ve got to catch the ball a lot better than we did.”
Higher stakes could make for higher concentration this weekend. Even though Rowan and Asheboro competed for the area championship, both squads were assured of berths in the state tournament.
On the line this weekend is one spot for the N.C. champion in the southeast regionals in Albany, Ga.
“Our main focus is to be focused. We went in last series and everybody — kids, people in town, everybody — was talking about it didn’t mean anything,”Gantt said. “We were down 3-1 before we focused. We have to get our minds right and be ready to go down and play.”
It may turn out that losing to Asheboro was a blessing in disguise. The teams played seven games in eight days, traveled an hour back and forth each night and generally wore each other out.
“We’re not going to play seven games while we’re down there and that’s what we just did. We used four pitchers just trying to catch a ground ball in Game 4,”Gantt said. “If nothing else, maybe we got some practice at being in the losers’ bracket.”
At the very least, Rowan saw for one of the few times this summer that it isn’t perfect, that for all its power, hitting and pitching, losses can come.
“It would’ve been great to win, but maybe this will motivate us, see that somebody can beat us,”Rowan leftfielder Jimbo Davis said. “We’ll come out with everything we’ve got down there.”
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Contact Steve Hanf at 704-797-4287 or shanf@salisburypost.com
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