The Greeneville Greene Devils defeated Munford 10-0 on Saturday, May 24, 2025, to win a TSSAA Class 3A state championship in Murfreesboro, Tenn. (Photo by Danny Parker/5Star Preps).
BY DEAN FOX
MURFREESBORO — Greeneville has always worn green and white and black trim. That’s about tradition.
But if you looked more closely at the Greene Devils baseball players Saturday, they also wore red shoes. That’s about standards, mentality and championships.
With an ode to Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls of the 1990s on their feet, the Greene Devils took command from the start Saturday morning, rolling to a 10-0, five-inning win over Munford in the Class 3A title game at Siegel High School.
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“If you’re going to wear those shoes, you’ve got to come here and ball,” senior first baseman Kobe Mundy said. “And I think that’s what we’ve done.”
If Greeneville has a Jordan, it’s Carson Quillen, who was named Class 3A Mr. Baseball earlier this week.
On Saturday, Quillen pitched a shutout and drove in five runs, including a walk-off two-run single that clinched the crown.
“Obviously it feels great being able to get a win today,” Quillen said. “I’m happy for our senior class and happy for our seniors. You see the young guys, and you start to make it a tradition and a standard. I think it’s good not just for us but for our young guys.”
The victory gave the Greene Devils their third state title, having won it in 2018 and 2023. Quillen was a sophomore on the team two seasons ago, when Greeneville beat Upperman 1-0 in a nail-biting championship game.
This year’s title-clinching win had no such drama.
Greeneville used its speed to score its first run without hitting the ball out of the infield. Quillen led off the inning with an infield single, and advanced on groundouts — barely safe at third ahead of an attempted tag. Will Harmon then bounced a ball up the middle, which the shortstop could field but made a wild, off-balanced throw.
It turned out that was just an appetizer.
The Greene Devils used three singles to load the bases with one out in the second, and Quillen singled home a pair of runs to make it 3-0.
A pair of walks forced in Jeremiah Griffin, and Quillen came home on a force play. Noah Murray then singled home the fifth run of the inning to make it 6-0, and Will Harmon scored on a wild pitch to end the six-run frame.
Quillen’s RBI- single in the third extended the lead to 8-0, and then had the walk-off single that sent the Devils storming out of the dugout to celebrate another crown.
Greeneville’s hot start was partially motivated by Friday’s games. The Devils lost to South Gibson in their first game, but scored four runs in the first inning and rolled to a 9-1 victory in the winner-take-all second game.
“We wanted to come out hot,” Quillen said. “Yesterday, we lost our first game and we started out slow. In the second game, we came out fast. The good thing for us is that we’ve been in this spot, and we knew how to prepare.”
That preparation showed in the six-run second, which effectively put the game out of reach.
Jordan would be proud.
All about the shoes? No. It was about execution, mentality and championships.
“I don’t think words describe it,” Mundy said. “Coming into this game and doing that, I’m on top of the world right now.”