MURRAY \u2014 After watching his team spot Hopkins County Central a 2-0 lead on the first at-bat of today\u2019s Kentucky 2A Championships Sectional 1 Baseball Tournament semifinal matchup, Murray High Head Coach Sam Rushing sensed an opportunity for a reminder session.<\/p>\n
His team had not looked solid defensively and he wanted to make sure they understood the situation. So he gathered his entire squad in a circle and asked the following question.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I was talking to you earlier, what did I say was guaranteed today? Nothing! Nothing was guaranteed!\u201d Rushing\u2019s voice boomed as he snapped his team back to attention.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Tigers responded with six runs in the bottom of the first and, except for a few other slightly-rough moments, maintained command in a 13-3 run-rule knockout win at Alumni Field\/Cary Miller Park that \u201cguaranteed\u201d a spot in Saturday\u2019s scheduled sectional title game against a Paducah Tilghman program that has won this event every year since its inception in 2021.\u00a0<\/p>\n
That game is in doubt due to a weather forecast that is calling for rain. At last check, first pitch is still set for 6 Saturday night at historic Brooks Stadium in Paducah.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe want the championship,\u201d said Rushing, whose team (6-4) had Tilghman (state 2A champion in both 2021 and \u201922) seemingly beaten in last year\u2019s semis in Murray, only to lose a seventh-inning lead and ultimately fall, 8-6, in eight innings. \u201cSo we wanted to play another game in this thing.<\/p>\n
\u201c(Guarantees) is what we talked about today. We talked about being prepared, the work we\u2019ve put in every single day \u2026 but that doesn\u2019t guarantee anything. The rent is still due every day.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t think it was so much they were playing like they were trying to guarantee anything, we were tight, plus (Hop Central, now 5-5) did a good job of coming out in the first inning and they punched us. They\u2019re a good team and they were confident coming in here today.\u201d<\/p>\n
A lot of stress was alleviated in the bottom of the first as the Tigers took advantage of a rash of Hop Central miscues. A bad pickoff throw allowed Avery Starks to score from third and a wild pitch as Colin Winters walked led to a bad throw that allowed Simon Rickman to tie the game from second base.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Knox Tabers\u2019 single to right field then gave the Tigers a 3-2 lead and Liam Ryan\u2019s bases-loaded infield single that led to another error upped the lead to 5-2. Jacob Crady then ended the inning by scoring on the back end of a double steal with Ryan.<\/p>\n
Hop Central remained dangerous and did score once in the fourth as Crady struggled with command and had to deal with several innings with multiple baserunners.\u00a0<\/p>\n
However, the lefty did manage to avoid lots of runs by making big pitches at big times. He escaped a dangerous third inning with a strikeout with runners at the corners. He finished the fourth with a bases-loaded strikeout to end his day with 88 pitches.<\/p>\n
\u201cSomething we talk a lot about is how you won\u2019t have your best stuff every day. Can you still have a quality start? He found a way to give us four innings and that was huge,\u201d Rushing said of Crady, who emerged having scattered eight hits.<\/p>\n
Inspired by their pitcher, the Tigers then finished the job by doing something Rushing said has been a bugaboo for this team most of the season \u2014 not leaving runners on base.<\/p>\n
Starks scored on an Asa Munsey fielder\u2019s choice, followed by Crady\u2019s RBI single, Tabers\u2019 RBI fielder\u2019s choice, Winters scoring on a wild pitch and Nick Bell\u2019s RBI single. Now, the Tigers were only two runs from an early end to the game.<\/p>\n
After Tabers pitched a hitless fifth inning, the end was not long in coming. Starks\u2019 leadoff double was immediately followed by Simon Rickman\u2019s long triple to center field. Parker\u2019s fly ball to center then was lost in the lights by the Hop Central outfield and became the game-ending single.<\/p>\n
Murray High ended the day with nine hits with Starks 3-for-3 with two runs scored. Bell had two hits and two RBIs, while Tabers had two RBIs. However, the Tigers caused a lot of Hop Central\u2019s problems by simply getting the ball in play, along with keeping the basepaths occupied. Bad throws off stolen bases and attempted pickoffs, along with several ground balls resulting fielder\u2019s choices and errors were the payoff.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m just really excited that our bats showed up. I think we\u2019ve left, like, 87 runners in scoring position just this week,\u201d Rushing said of how this was an issue in close losses to Kentucky Region 1 stalwarts Graves County and St. Mary (Paducah). \u201cTonight, we were able to get a few in and that\u2019s contagious. We want to keep doing that.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MURRAY \u2014 After watching his team spot Hopkins County Central a 2-0 lead on the first at-bat of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":662130,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2288],"tags":[2315,2309,2336,3521,5,2316,2313,2325,53,18724,2330,2333,2422,2334,19,2310,2328,2304,2308,4,2305,2303,2307,3649,185,2560,2338,2311,2312],"class_list":{"0":"post-662129","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mlb-postseason","8":"tag-athletic-sports","9":"tag-ball-and-bat-games","10":"tag-ball-games","11":"tag-base-running","12":"tag-baseball","13":"tag-baseball-competitions","14":"tag-baseball-playoffs-and-champions","15":"tag-baseball-teams","16":"tag-detroit-tigers","17":"tag-fielding-error","18":"tag-glossary-of-baseball-terms","19":"tag-grass-field-surfaces","20":"tag-hit-baseball","21":"tag-lawn-games","22":"tag-major-league-baseball","23":"tag-major-league-baseball-competitions","24":"tag-major-league-baseball-playoffs","25":"tag-major-league-baseball-postseason","26":"tag-major-league-baseball-teams","27":"tag-mlb","28":"tag-mlb-playoffs","29":"tag-mlb-postseason","30":"tag-outdoor-sports","31":"tag-pickoff","32":"tag-sports","33":"tag-stolen-base","34":"tag-team-activities","35":"tag-team-sports","36":"tag-turf-sports"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":"Validation failed: Text character limit of 500 exceeded"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/662129","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=662129"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/662129\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/662130"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=662129"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=662129"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=662129"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}