STARKVILLE — Facing a Lewisburg team with six NCAA Division I signees, Starkville (14-15) did all it could in Friday night’s MHSAA 7A playoff opener. But shaky defense from the Yellow Jackets in the sixth inning helped lead to two runs for the Patriots, which made the difference a 4-2 Starkville defeat. A 9-3 Game 2 loss to the Patriots in Lewisburg on Saturday saw the Jackets fall out of the playoffs.
“We competed really well. We hit a lot of balls hard right at them,” Starkville head coach Mark Monaghan said after the Friday loss. “It’s just baseball. We have to be a little bit cleaner on defense, come up with a few more swings, some better swings in some big situations. They got those and we didn’t.”
Lewisburg (23-8) put together a two-out rally in the first against Yellow Jackets starter Jonas Coleman with a double, a hit batter and an RBI single. But Coleman limited the damage to just one run and then settled down after that, not allowing a runner to even reach scoring position in the next three innings.
Starkville’s offense, though, struggled in the early going against Stone McCaughey. The Ole Miss commit was effectively wild in his four innings of work — he walked three batters, plunked two more and uncorked four wild pitches — but held the Yellow Jackets scoreless until Cohen Deweese hit an RBI single to tie the game in the fourth.
The Patriots responded with a run of their own in the fifth on three straight one-out singles, but again Coleman prevented the big inning, escaping further damage on a strikeout and a fly ball to center. He then helped his own cause in the bottom of the inning, swatting a solo home run over the high wall in left field to again even the score.
“I gave my team all I had,” Coleman said. “It felt awesome, being able to get back into the game, giving us a chance to come back. That’s all we can ask for.”
Starkville could only manage two walks over the final two innings against Louisiana commit Matthew Osteen, who struck out Coleman and cleanup hitter Will Moody back-to-back in the seventh to end the game.
“You want to keep pushing back and be right there at the end of the game, and I thought we were,” Monaghan said. “Giving up those few runs there in the sixth proved to really hurt us.”
Senior Otto Hyche took the mound for the Jackets on Saturday, and his two scoreless innings helped the Jackets establish a 3-0 lead early in the must-win Game 2. Jonas Coleman and Cameron Petty drove in the first-inning runs to get the jump on the Patriots, but the hosts responded to tie the game in the third and pull away with a five-run fourth.
The Patriots would add one more before closing out the series with a 9-3 win.
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