TUPELO — It was natural for Jason Garrett to break into a jog.
After all, when you follow the game plan and stay back and drive a pitch as well as Garrett did, you just want to admire your handiwork.
Fortunately for the Tupelo High School baseball team, Garrett had enough time to recover after watching his bullet to right-center field carom off the wall and was quick enough to beat the relay throw to second base after driving in the game’s first run.
“I was doing a little trot around first base,” Garrett said, smiling. “I thought it was out.”
Garrett’s double was the only extra-base hit Tupelo needed partly because it stayed with its game plan of not trying to do too much with the off-speed offerings from left-hander Justin Conner. As a result, Tupelo went the other way on three of its first four hits and also capitalized on six errors to beat Starkville 5-1 in Game 1 of the best-of-three Mississippi High School Activities Association Class 6A playoff series.
“I got in the front of the box and waited on my pitch,” Garrett said. “I saw it and hit it as hard as I could.”
Tupelo first-year head coach Justin Reed, who is from Louisville, said Garrett shook off a case of rust and nerves and settled down on the mound to earn the complete-game victory. Garrett issued three of his five walks in the first three innings. The left-hander, who will play baseball at Memphis, allowed three hits and struck out nine to improve to 7-2. His sixth double of the season also gave him a team-leading 28 RBIs.
“Jason threw well,” Reed said. “He got himself into some jams, but he worked himself out of them.”
A sacrifice fly by Tucker Whitenton scored pinch runner Nick Ratliff to make it 2-0 in the fourth.
Tupelo tacked on two runs on one hit and three errors in the fifth. It added an insurance run in the sixth on a sacrifice fly by Jackson Bridges.
Conner allowed five hits and two earned runs. He walked one and didn’t strike out a batter.
Reed said Tupelo (18-9), which received a bye for winning Region 2, had a chance to watch Starkville play in the first round against DeSoto Central. He said the chance to see Conner helped the players understand they needed to take what Conner gave them and go with pitches. Josh Smith, Charlie Greer, and LaBryant Siddell did just that on Tupelo’s first three hits — all singles — before Garrett, a left-handed hitter, unloaded.
“It is just like any other lefty. Your approach has to be the other way,” Reed said. “He did a good job mixing back and forth. I think he was at 61 pitches in the sixth. Our approach was to take pitches and he didn’t allow that to happen because he commanded the zone and did a great job. He competed the whole time out there.”
Garrett also acknowledged it “wasn’t his best game,” but he said he fought through it and tried to let his defense do the job behind him.
Garrett escaped trouble in the second after two walks thanks to a caught stealing at third base and two strikeouts. He wiggled out of an even tougher spot in the third, as Starkville loaded the bases on a single by Will Murphree, a walk by Milton Smith Jr., and Carter Bentley reaching on catcher’s interference with one out. But Garrett retired No. 3 hitter AJ Brown on a pop up to the shortstop on the first pitch. He fell behind Rashon Tate 3-0 before coming back to strike him out.
“Tip your hat to him,” Starkville coach Travis Garner said. “He is who we thought he was. We didn’t take really good approaches with him, but probably a lot of that had to do with him. He threw strikes, commanded the zone, and had good stuff. I hope we see him again.”
Starkville (18-10), the third-place team from Region 3, defeated reigning state champion DeSoto Central in the first round. It won both games of the best-of-three series on the road. Against Tupelo, Starkville didn’t score until the sixth. Bentley walked, moved to second on a wild pitch and scored on a double to the base of the wall down the left-field wall by Tate. The ball dropped inside the foul line in front of the 310 on the wall.
Starkville stirred again in the seventh. Pinch hitter Will Prewitt singled and moved to second on a wild pitch. Ben Burrell walked. With one out, both runners moved up a base on a fielder’s choice off the bat of Smith Jr. that saw the second baseman flip the ball too late to the shortstop covering second base. Bentley followed with a line drive up the middle that second baseman Gatlin Farrar speared and flipped to shortstop Stephen Matthews to end the game.
“I knew they were going to hit it,” Garrett said. “I am usually a strikeout pitcher, but I trust my defense behind me, obviously with that last play. They saved me. I just tried to calm down and let them hit it.”
Garner agreed things could have been very different if Farrar didn’t make the diving stop to his right. At least one run would have scored on the play, and it would have given Brown, who was 0-for-3, a chance to do some damage.
“We gave ourselves some chances,” Garner said. “Bentley squares that ball up at the end, and if that ball gets into center field it is 5-3 and the middle of the order is back up. That is baseball. They hit a couple of balls hard that we made plays on, so it all kind of evened out.
“We had runners on first and second with nobody out and couldn’t score. We had bases loaded and one out and couldn’t score. That is the difference in the game. We didn’t play a clean game. We didn’t play bad, but we didn’t play good. We need to play well Monday night.”
Game 2 will be at 6 p.m. Monday in Starkville. If necessary, Game 3 will be Tuesday at a time to be determined in Tupelo.
Follow Dispatch sports editor Adam Minichino on Twitter @ctsportseditor
Adam Minichino is the former Sports Editor for The Commercial Dispatch.
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