A star effort by Easley in win over Aiken

EASLEY — Easley baseball coach Gill Payne might have said it best after an excitement-filled 10-4 win over a stubborn Lancaster team on Monday night in the second game of the state tournament.

“It is a different guy every night. To have really good team, that has to happen,” he said.

And it did.

“Mr. May - that’s what I call Levi (Recio),” Payne said. “He goes off every May and today is May 1. He smoked a triple and drove in three runs.”

Coach Payne talks a lot about getting the lead-off guy on base. Recio did just that against Aiken with a 2-for-3 effort at the plate, a walk, 3 runs scored and he drove in 3 runs.

In the top of the sixth inning, left fielder Braxton Patton gunned down a runner at home plate. The hometown crowd - sitting in the bleachers behind home plate and in their lawn chairs near the fence - erupted and he was ambushed by his teammates as he came off the field.

“He was going (to try and score from third) and I heard Levi (Recio) say cannon,” Patton said, about his biggest defensive play of his life. “So, I just threw it as hard as I could on the line. It just gave us all that momentum.”

Added Coach Payne, “He (Patton) has a pretty good arm, but he was out there pretty deep and one-hopped it. I didn’t think there was a chance to throw that guy out. He threw it and it bounced. I saw Tolbert catch it and the guy stopped (before home plate). I thought man … what a throw.”

Now remember, Lancaster held a 3-2 lead after three innings of play. That’s until the Green Wave broke the game open with 5 runs in the bottom of the fourth inning.

Junior catcher Aaron Tolbert is another player who made a key play for Easley - this time at the plate. Tolbert stepped up to the plate 0-for-3 in the bottom of the sixth inning - he had flown out twice to deep center field for fly-outs. Tolbert answered the call with a rope down the third-base line to drive in 2 runs.

Not to be overlooked was a brilliant pitching performance by senior leader/pitcher Kaleb “KO” Owens. His stat line at the end of the game featured 6.1 innings, 9 hits, 4 runs (2 earned), 1 walk and 5 strikeouts. It was just a gutsy 99-pitch effort that featured having to make an adjustment or two against a really talented Lancaster team.

Coach Payne talked to Owens at the end of the fifth inning and Owens said he had another inning left in him and 20 pitches left.

“We knew they (Lancaster) were going to be pretty good, but they swung it,” said Coach Payne. “Kaleb hadn’t been hit like that all year. They came out first-pitch and swinging fastball.”

So to the credit of Owens, he knew that he had to mix things up a bit.

“They (Lancaster) were hitting fastballs early on and I told my pitching coach that we have to start mixing it up,” Owens said. “I just worked with a couple of sliders and curve balls.”

Continued Owens, “I told myself coming into this (game) that if it goes a little sideways to stay confident and stick to your stuff. I knew I was going to be fine and to trust my defense. We haven’t been swinging it that great. I told everyone to stay calm and keep swinging. They’re going to fall. We put up a 5-spot and it was rolling from there. I’m just so proud of everybody. We’ve wanted this for so long. I can’t wait to see where it goes.”