Kosciusko pitchers allowed only five runs in three games, but that was not quite good enough as the Whippets were eliminated from the 4A baseball playoffs by Pontotoc for the second year in a row.
After Jacob Nunn pitched a no hitter Tuesday for a 5-0 Kosciusko win in the first game of the best of three series, Pontotoc won pitchers duels 3-2 and 2-1 Friday and Saturday.
“In yesterday’s game, we hit the ball hard. On the screws, just right at people,” coach Cole McBride said of the 2-1 loss.
Larson Fancher had the big hit in the 5-0 Kosciusko win, a three-run homer in the third that broke a scoreless tie.
Kosciusko got off to a fast start in the second game, taking a 2-0 lead in the first on a two-run single by Fancher. But the Whippets were blanked the rest of the way and Pontotoc scored single runs in the third, fourth and fifth. The winning run came in on a single by Jabari Farr, who retired the last four Kosciusko batters in relief of Jon Robert Carnes.
Ty Ramage went the distance for Kosciusko, allowing six hits while fanning nine.
All the scoring in the decisive game came in the first inning. The Warriors scored twice in the top of the inning and once again Farr drove in what proved to be the winning run with a one-out single.
Nunn led off the bottom of the inning with a home run, but that was the Whippets’ only run as Corbyn Clayton and Garrett Pound combined on a three hitter.
Landon Wallace pitched the first five innings for Kosciusko, allowing five hits, with eight strikeouts. Fancher finished up with two scoreless innings.
McBride said baserunning mistakes hurt the Whippets in the two losses.
A year ago, the Whippets season ended with a 9-8 loss to Pontotoc in the decisive game of a second round series.
Kosciusko was second behind West Lauderdale in Region 4-4A. Pontotoc finished in a tie for second with Ripley in 2-4A, but was a three seed by the MHSAA tie breaker. The Warriors will play Itawamba AHS in the second round.
With the season over, McBride paid tribute to the team’s six seniors — Nunn, Larson, Wallace, Payton Odom, Cooper Black and Drew Grace.
“I’m indebted to those six seniors,” he said. “In the future, they will be great husbands, great dads. The things they did will not go unnoticed. They laid the bricks.”
