BY JESSE SMITHEY
If experience is supposed to matter in the state tournament setting, nobody told the Heritage Mountaineers baseball team that this week.
They’ve done just fine without it.
The first-timers have enjoyed quite the ideal start in the Class 3A bracket, having won their second game in as many tries to reach the state semifinal round without a stain on the ledger.
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Heritage rallied past 36-win Crockett County on Wednesday at host-site Blackman High School to post an 8-6 win, avoiding any late-night elimination game — and, the win put the Mountaineers in a position to where they’ll have to lose twice Thursday to not reach the Class 3A state championship round.
“We’re just following our plan,” Heritage coach Robbie Bennett said.
Heritage (35-12) is slated to play next at 2 p.m. Thursday against either Crockett County (36-4) or Liberty Creek (31-9). The game will be played at Blackman High School.
After winning easy on Tuesday, Heritage showed an ability Wednesday to triumph through a back-and-forth affair. The Mountaineers led 5-0 after they put up three in the top of the third.
But heading into the fifth inning, Crockett County led 6-5.
No matter.
Hayden Sanders homered to center to lead off the inning. No. 9 hitter Ethan Marcum, with two outs, singled to left to score Brayden Littleton, who had reached on an error.
And in the seventh inning, with two outs, Easton Bennett hit a ground ball to third and reached on an error, which allowed Madden McNeil to score. McNeil had singled earlier in the inning with one out. McNeil went 2 for 2 with an RBI and two walks. He and Marcum led the Heritage lineup with two hits apiece.
“We got a veteran team. A lot of seniors who’ve been together for a long time. Great chemistry. That’s why we played the tough schedule we did,” Bennett said. “We got down in some games. We came back. They never lost their poise.
“Last year, they would lose their poise. This year, when things get tough, they know they can hit. They know we had Hudson (Brown) on the mound. … It was a total team effort. You can just tell these guys love each other and play for each other.”
Hudson Brown pitched a complete game for Heritage. Maybe his stat line wasn’t the cleanest, but he finished the game strong in the late innings and improved to 3-0 in May.
But his effort allowed the Mountaineers to preserve pitching depth for the upcoming high-stakes stages.
“That’s probably the biggest game I’ve pitched in my life,” he said.
“Having pitchers behind us (for the next few days) is very important,” Brown added. “I needed to do that (today), for sure. That definitely gives us a good advantage going ahead in the tournament.”