MURRAY — The fun of postseason tournament brackets in any sport is examining the matchups themselves and seeing the many interesting connections inside them.
This year, the setup for the 4th District Baseball/Softball Championships is full of them.
It is scheduled to start tonight in Draffenville, where Marshall County will be hosting both tournaments. However, as has been the case for the past two weeks, it seems, Mother Nature may have a big say in these games being played.
If she behaves, next-door neighbors Calloway County and Murray High will be meeting at 5:30 in the softball tournament and defending 4th District Tournament champion Calloway County will be trying to keep that title against the host Marshals in a game set for a 6 p.m. first pitch. Again, though, the forecast is looking very questionable; the Ledger & Times will try to stay ahead of the situation with online updates at both www.murrayledger.com and The Ledger & Times Facebook page.
One thing is known and that is new 4th District regular season baseball champion Murray High, for once, is a team that does not have to deal with the elimination round. With the Tigers’ 3-1 district mark this season, they not only are the No.1 seeds for this week but they have automatic passage to the Kentucky Region 1 Championship party the following week in Paducah.
To say the least, it has been a tough spring for both Calloway and Murray High. The combination of injuries to key players, along with a few unexpected decisions to not continue playing from other players, left the Lady Lakers and Lady Tigers even younger than previously predicted.
That has served to hamper both programs, which enter the postseason a combined 7-35, not, at all, what was expected after Murray High seemed to make a surge last season and Calloway long an established program in farwestern Kentucky.
On paper, tonight’s game would seem to favor the Lady Lakers (4-19), who won both of the regular-season meetings that comprise The Murray Bank Cross-Town Classic series. The latest of those games was on Wednesday as the Lady Lakers took a 10-2 win in a game that was moved to Murray-Calloway County Chestnut Park on the fourth attempt to play it before the end of the regular season due to persistent rains that hit in the past two weeks.
However, a closer look at Wednesday’s matchup shows that the Lady Tigers (3-16) were more competitive than that score showed. With pitcher MacKenzie Tolliver giving a nice effort in the circle, Murray High was still in this game into the late innings, trailing 5-1 after five innings after Calloway hurler Hailee Jones opened the game by striking out seven of the first nine batters she faced.
And Tolliver did a nice job of continuing to give her team at least a fighting chance in the sixth, emerging from a bases-loaded jam with only one additional run crossing the plate. However, Calloway, which has hit the ball much better toward the end of the season, re-loaded the bases in the seventh and scored four times, once on an RBI groundout by Maila Clark and once on a sacrifice fly by Lyla Ward.
In the first game of the season on the Lakers’ home field, Calloway took an 11-1 win by run-rule knockout in five innings, so, off that alone, the Lady Tigers gave a much better showing on Wednesday.
These teams met in the first round a year ago with Calloway breaking open a close game in the middle innings to win, 8-1. However, this series has seen some high drama in the postseason, such as the last time this event was in Draffenville in 2022.
On that occasion, heavy underdog Murray High took a Calloway team that had taken third in the highly-competitive Kentucky 2A Championships State Tournament to the wire. In fact, Murray High had the bases loaded and only one out in the seventh inning but could not get the hit it needed in a 2-1 loss.
Again, though, and as will be the case with the baseball tournament next door at Preston Cope Field, weather will decide if this game is able to leave the launching pad tonight.
To the winner will go an automatic berth in next week’s regional at Graves County and a game against regular season champion Marshall (on Tuesday, or whenever the weather allows.
For the first time in five seasons, it is not a Cross-Town meeting that is occurring in the opener after Murray High (12-15 overall but was 3-1 in district play), who lost all five of those times to Calloway (14-12, 1-3), is in the position of awaiting the winner of a game between the host Marshals (19-8) and Lakers.
If the past two years are any indication, this game will be a fight. The last two seasons have seen the teams split their regular-season meetings with Calloway winning a wild matchup this spring at Preston Cope, 7-6, in nine innings, then the Marshals exacting revenge two days later, 11-2, on the same Laker Field where they relinquished their district tourney last year by a 2-1 score in eight innings to Calloway.
Entering this game, the Lakers must restart their hitting machine. They are 6-5 since the loss to Marshall on April 24 and, while they have scored in double digits three times, it has not really been because of hits. In fact, their highest hit total was seven and that was in the 11-1 home win over Trigg County that immediately followed the loss to Marshall.
Calloway did score 10 runs in wins in a home doubleheader sweep over Ballard Memorial but only had nine combined hits, three in one of those games and had eight in Saturday’s 10-5 win over Hopkinsville at Laker. Head Coach Jonah Brannon lamented about this subject after the 2-1 loss to Murray High at Alumni Field/Cary Miller Park that clinched the Tigers’ first 4th regular season title since 2013, when the Lakers only had four, two of those from one player — catcher Cuyler McDaniel.
One thing Calloway does have is a proven commodity on the mound. And after a pair of rocky starts against Paducah Tilghman (who continues to close ground on last year’s state runner-up, McCracken County, after two close losses this spring) and a good Henry County (Tenn.) team, Cantrell seems to have regained his stuff. This is, after all, the same Nick Cantrell that, in back-to-back seasons — the first as an eighth grader — was put in the ring with McCracken in the first round of the regional and had the Mustangs controlled until the later innings.
However, he will need to have his best stuff against a Marshals team that is playing at a high level. Marshall posted very impressive wins this month over a good Caldwell County ballclub from Region 2 and a St. Mary (Paducah) team that is not only a traditional western Kentucky power but has shown strong ability to punch above its weight class all season.
That game is set for 6 tonight, again weather permitting. The winner gets the Tigers in a game scheduled for 6:30 Tuesday night.
Murray High earned that top seed with three straight wins in district play, starting with a 3-2 victory over Marshall in eight innings. That marked the Tigers’ first win over the Marshals since 2016, which was also the last time the Tigers have played in a regional.
That put them and the Lakers in position to snatch the regular season title away from Marshall for the first time since Calloway won both the regular season and tournament titles in 2018. It was the Tigers getting the Cross-Town sweep, getting Will McCoil’s go-ahead fifth-inning three-run home run in a 7-2 win at Laker Field, then McCoil’s walk-off single at Alumni.