By East Alabama Sports Today
PHIL CAMPBELL – Piedmont’s season was down to its last bats, but the Bulldogs fought to the end.
The state’s second-ranked team scored three runs in the bottom of the seventh on a bases-loaded error to beat Phil Campbell 7-6 and earn a split in the first two games of the best-of-3 Class 3A semifinal series.
Phil Campbell, ranked third in the final regular-season 3A poll, won the opener 13-0 in five innings.
The teams will play for a berth in the Class 3A state championships series here Friday at 1 p.m. The winner will face either Providence Christian or Bayside Academy in the state championship series next week in Montgomery.
The Bulldogs trailed 6-4 going into the home seventh after Phil Campbell scored what appeared to be an insurance run in the top of the inning.
Jack Hayes and Sean Smith got the rally started with back-to-back singles. Hayes singled after appearing to get hit with a pitch but brought back to the box when the umpire ruled he didn’t make an effort to avoid the pitch.
The Bobcats changed pitchers, bringing in Mason Swinney, who threw 74 pitches in a Game 1 one-hitter. Swinney hit Jadon Calhoun to load the bases, bringing Jakari Foster to the plate.
Foster fell behind in the count 0-2. He took a ball, then hit a smash to short that caromed off the arm of shortstop Luke Barnwell into center field. One run scored, then centerfield Bryant Hyde tried to get Calhoun at third and his throw sailed over the fence bringing the tying and winning runs home.
“It was pretty clutch,” Foster said. “We were down and we’ve always been taught not to get down on each other. Coach told me to be disciplined at the plate. I put my foot down, got my hands ready and put it in play.
“I’m just feeling hyped, but we’ve got another game tomorrow we’ve got to get.”
The Bulldogs fell behind 4-0. They got a run in a third on Hayes’ RBI single, then tied it in the fourth on McClane Mohon’s bases-loaded double that cleared the bases in some eerie foreshadowing of the way it finished.
Two runs scored on the initial hit and Cassius Fairs scored the tying run on the throw from left fielder Hunter Baker.
The Game 2 rally brought a positive end to an otherwise difficult day for the Bulldogs. They gave up an eight-run inning in the first game, managed only one hit and four base runners in the first game and were charged with 13 errors in the twinbill.
Of the 19 runs Phil Campbell scored, 10 were earned.
Hayes had Piedmont’s only hit in Game 1, a one-out single in the first inning. The Bulldogs put runners at second and third in the inning, but Swinney got out of it with a strikeout and ground out. Swinney retired 14 of the 15 batters he faced after the hit.