PADUCAH — Monday night’s Kentucky Region 1 Baseball Championship first-round matchup between Calloway County and state superpower McCracken County, in a way, resembled last year’s second-round meeting.
There was one big difference. Unlike last year, when the Lakers surprisingly took an early lead against the mighty Mustangs, as was the case again Monday, they were still very much alive by the time the game ended.
Where it ended with McCracken pulling away to an easy win last year at Mayfield, this battle never saw that type of separation before the Lakers saw their season end by a 3-1 final score at Edward Jones Field. The loss ended Calloway’s season at 14-18, while the Mustangs’s season continues at 26-10.
“We kind of went old fashioned on them, asked them to not let go of the rope tonight and at no time did they. They just hung on throughout this game,” said Calloway Head Coach Travis Turner, whose team led 1-0 after two innings after Conner Lockhart’s double allowed him to score on Cuyler McDaniel’s sacrifice fly. McCracken did tie the game in the bottom half of the second on a Zach Sims sacrifice fly.
From that point, though, the game was largely played on even terms.
“It was just that idea of refusing to give up and give in, regardless of the score and it worked out where we were in the game throughout, and I wanted them to have that concept in their mind that, even if the score got to, say, 7-2, we wanted to make it go the distance. We wanted to give ourselves a chance throughout,” said Turner, whose team was facing a major deficit in experience. McCracken, who has reached at least the semifinals of the state tournament the last two seasons under former Calloway skipper Zach Hobbs, fields a team that consists of only three underclassmen, along with five seniors. The other 18 are juniors.
Calloway brought a team to Edward Jones Field consisting of only three seniors and three juniors with two middle schoolers.
“The thing is we’re so young, you have to look at the big picture. Yes, for (seniors Andrew Adams, Braden Pingel and son Cadwell Turner), we want to win right now and it’s been the dream of my professional life as a coach to be the team that beats McCracken (who has never failed to win the region title since coming into existence in 2014). So I told them (after the game), ‘Hey, maybe not this year but, next year, you keep working at it.”
McCracken finally broke the tie in the fourth with the final two runs of the game, both of which came after an error on a no-man’s land fly ball to shallow right field with two outs that would have ended the inning. Taking advantage of the chance was McCracken’s Jude Farley with a two-run single that drove home the final two runs.
That was also what starting pitcher Tyler Chapman needed to give him a smoother path to victory as the southpaw tossed a complete game, allowing only three hits. However, he was not overpowering, only striking out four batters as the Lakers constantly made the McCracken defense work to get outs.
On the other side of the pitching matchup, one of those Calloway middle schoolers left a calling card for the season. Eighth grader Nick Cantrell, who has had some huge moments on the hill this season, faced one of the most powerful lineups in Kentucky and, for the most part, controlled it.
For the night, the right hander went two outs into the sixth inning before giving way to freshman righty Zach Akin, another hurler who was outstanding, at times, for Turner’s bunch. Cantrell surrendered all of McCracken’s three hits and managed to strike out six batters.
“Nick just gave a marvelous effort and Zach came in and got us out of a jam there in the sixth to keep us in it … just another great effort by our guys,” Turner said, focusing on how Cantrell came to become such an important part of the pitching staff at such a young age this season.
“I would like to think that just being part of our program has helped him, but God has blessed him in two big areas. His arm is one and it’s his arm path, the speed of his arm is why he’s been able to generate such pace from such a small frame at this point but it’s also a very repeatable arm action. It’s so clean. It’s so efficient. The other thing is he’s competitive he’s coachable.
‘We saw last year (during middle school ball in the fall) that his arm talent was tremendous, but he didn’t understand how to pitch. He was trying to blow everybody away …. it was about stuff. I told him, ‘Buddy? Your fastball is good for an eighth grader but you’re not going to blow anybody away at the varsity level.You’ve got to pitch.You’ve got to throw strikes. You’ve got to pitch to your defense.’ But his competitiveness, he loves to compete, he’s unafraid, he’s just a special young man with a great future.”
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