Published: May 24, 2006 11:34 am            

Newton County wins 3A baseball title

DECATUR — Newton County coach Wyatt Tullos was right where he wanted to be last Wednesday at Trustmark Park in Jackson.

With one game to decide a Class 3A state championship, Tullos was about to send senior Jared Cavenaugh for the last time.

And Cavenaugh delivered as he pitched a complete game, delivered three hits at the plate and drove in three runs as the Cougars claimed the Class 3A state championship by beating Water Valley 6-4.

With the win, the Cougars finished the season with a 33-7 record and claimed the school’s first-ever state championship in baseball. It was the third state championship for coach Wyatt Tullos who won titles at Lake and Hamilton.

“We told the kids the whole time that you can’t just win one game,” Tullos said. “We told our kids that you have to win two games, win the next game. That was sort of our motto. You do what you can to win the game you are playing but always win the next game.

“After we lost game one, we talked with the kids about the opportunities we had. We talked about our chances to win and told them that all we had to do was go on a two-game winning streak and we would be state champions.”

On this day, the story was about Cavenaugh, who kept the Water Valley hitters off balance all day. After giving up two runs in the fifth inning, the University of Southern Mississippi signee shut the door on the Blue Devils, striking out four of the last six batters, including striking out the side in the top of the seventh with his last pitch hitting 91 mph on the radar gun.

“He was just awesome,” Tullos said. “He was tough and determined to win. He threw a lot of strikes and kept his pitch count down. I think that the fact that we kept his pitch count down earlier in the season had a lot to do with his performance later in the season. We hoped we could get on him and ride him toward the end and that’s what we did.”

After losing 2-1 in nine innings in game one, the Cougars responded in game three against Water Valley pitcher Brandon Hall. The Cougars banged out 12 hits with the bottom three batters in the lineup providing five of those hits and scoring five of the six County runs.

“We put a lot more pressure on them in the last two games than we did in the first game,” Tullos said. “We talk about needed to be relentless up and down the line. I thought our kids really responded and were relentless at the plate. That was the case here, our guys at the bottom of the lineup set the table for those guys at the top of the lineup.”

The Cougars took the early lead in the contest in the second inning with a two-out rally. It started as Brandon Williams singled to right field and was followed by a Joseph Buckley single to right as well. Then No. 9 hitter Josh Pender drew a walk to bring up Cavenaugh, who had struggled at the plate the last half of the season.

Cavenaugh responded as he laced a double over the right fielder’s head to clear the bases and give County a 3-0 lead.

“Cavenaugh is the kind of hitter than never thinks you should get him out,” Tullos said. “No matter how bad he looks or what the other pitcher did, he always thinks he should get a hit. That’s a great characteristic to have. So when he come up in that situation, he went up there thinking he was supposed to get the big hit.”

After County took that 3-0 lead, Water Valley responded with two runs in the top of the third inning to cut the lead to 3-2.

After going down in order in the third inning, the Cougars got things going again with help from the bottom of the lineup.

This time, Tyler Davis started the inning with a walk and Brandon Williams reached with a single. Williams was forced out at second on a fielder’s choice by Buckley to put runners at first and third. Then Pender laced a singled to left field to plate Davis.

After Cavenaugh singled up the middle to load the bases, Jeremy May had an infield single to score Buckley and Robert Westbrook, who was 2-for-3 as the team’s designated hitter, lifted a sacrifice fly to right field to score Pender and give County a commanding 6-2 lead.

But again, Water Valley fought back with a pair of runs in the fifth inning on a pair of hits to cut the score to 6-4.

That’s when Cavenaugh seemed to get his second win as he sensed the victory as the senior right-hander set Water Valley down in order the last two innings to get the win and improve his record to 17-1 on the season, winning more than half of Newton County’s games.

        

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