MOCKSVILLE — South Rowan’s baseball team had hoped to be playing at least one more night in the Central Piedmont Conference Tournament, but the young Raiders fell to Mount Tabor for the third time this season, 6-1, here Wednesday.
Coach Linn Williams club lost out in the CPC semifinals after spotting the top-seeded Titans a 5-1 lead in the first inning.
“We’ve struggled the first inning, it seems like, the whole year,” said Williams, who coached the Raiders to a 10-14 mark in his first season as head man.
“That’s kind of been our Achilles heel. We’ve been behind. It seems like we play catch-up ball a lot this year. That will be one of our goals next year to get through the first inning,” he said.
Mount Tabor jumped on South pitcher Mike Davis for a single, a walk and a bunt single before Brian Bach’s grounder was errored by third baseman Craig Haas, giving the Spartans their first run. Andrew Frank’s slicing double to right field cleared the bases. Frank later scored on s a squeeze bunt by Ben Kaplan.
Davis, a sophomore who allowed only three earned runs, allowed only five hits and an unearned run the rest of the night.
“I don’t know if that first guy getting a hit (Justin Plummer) kind of unnerved him or whatever. He struggled through the first inning. He did a good job once he settled down,” said Williams.
Davis ended his first varsity season with a 4-2 record, losing twice to the Spartans.
Mount Tabor (19-5) got a solid pitching performance from senior right-hander David Stroup, who upped his mound record to 7-3. He allowed three hits — an infield single by Ronnie Shore to open the game and two solid shots to left by Justin Pinyan.
“Stroup did a good job. He kept the ball down and coaxed a lot of ground balls out of us. They do a good job; they’re a good team,” said Williams.
The Raiders were 0-3 against the Spartans this season and 5-2 against the rest of the CPC.
“We accomplished a lot of goals this year,” said Williams. “One of our major goals was to play better in the conference. We go 4-4 (regular season), playing for a conference championship on the last day of the season. (We got) a split here in the conference tournament, so that’s 5-5 against the conference.
“Obviously, we’re disappointed that the season is over. We’re disappointed we didn’t win the championship when we had a chance. But we feel like we made some strides this year to get competitive in the conference and next year to make a real legitimate run at a playoff berth.”
The Raiders finished last in the CPC in 2000.
South needed a win over the Spartans on Friday to gain a four-way share of the CPC title, but lost that game to Stroup (in relief) by a score of 8-4.
The Raiders won their tournament opener over R.J. Reynolds on Tuesday by 10-5.
Mount Tabor, coached by Trey Massie, will be trying to sweep CPC titles by beating West Forsyth in the championship game at 7 p.m. today at RichPark. West’s Titans beat Davie County 3-1 in the other semifinal game last night.
“I told the guys (before the tournament) that all we’ve got to do is show up to play,” said Massie, whose Spartans were already assured of a berth in the state playoffs. “But we still want to win it. We figure we’re here, we might as well try to take a trophy home with us tomorrow night. If we don’t, we just want to get better for the states.”
The Spartans will also be going after a school record.
“We’ve got a chance at 20 wins. They tell me the school record is 21, so we’re hoping to get to 21 and hopefully 22, so I can break it,” he said.
As for the three wins over South, Massie pointed out, “We’ve had one big inning against them every time we’ve played them, then we’ve been able to hold on.I don’t think it’s really that we’ve got their number, I think it’s that we get lucky and they make a couple of mistakes. Then that’s usually about all it takes.”
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