ONA -- Power was on display Tuesday night at Cabell Midland with the Knights and Hurricane combining for five home runs on the evening.
However, quantity did not outweigh quality as Brett Barber hit a go-ahead grand slam in the fifth inning to give Hurricane an 8-4 victory in Class AAA, Region IV, Section 3 action.
"There's almost nothing better than that," Barber said. "That was the hit that put us in position to win the game."
Barber, who had admittedly been in a slump of late, went high to get a pitch from Cabell Midland reliever Matt Hall to give the Redskins a 6-3 lead.
Justin Henry's RBI double two batters later increased the lead to four before Hall settled in and got three straight groundouts to avoid further damage. Henry finished with three RBIs.
"Hall has been nasty every time he's faced us," Hurricane coach Billy Joe Hicks said. "It looked like he just didn't have his good stuff tonight."
Hicks said the same of Hurricane starter Justin Henry, who has been dominant to this point in the season. Cabell Midland touched him up for three home runs -- two of which came from Adam Wakefield -- and 10 hits on the evening. However, baserunning errors plagued the Knights as they left nine runners on base and had a pair of mistakes potentially take them out of run-producing innings.
"We have to limit our mental mistakes," Cabell Midland coach Tracy Brumfield said. "We can't make mental errors on the basepaths. We have to know what we are going to do before it happens and come out and play baseball."
Hurricane jumped out to a 2-0 lead in the first inning after Henry's two-run single with the bases loaded scored Barber and Chris Finch.
While Henry fared well at the plate, he struggled with his control on the mound, but found a way out of tight situations. He finished with 110 pitches in the complete-game win.
"I really thought he'd come out and give us a dominating effort, but he didn't have anything," Hicks said. "I remember Howard Daniels, who used to coach at Capital, once yelled to his pitcher 'Your fastball ain't fasting, your curveball ain't curving and your change-up ain't changing.' That's pretty much what (Henry) had today."
Cabell Midland answered in the second when Jeremy Ash led off with a home run to left-center to cut the deficit in half. Two batters later, Wakefield tied the game with his first of the evening to right-center. Wakefield finished 3-for-3.
Ash singled in Jake Gaskins in the third inning to give the Knights a 3-2 lead, but the Knights had a runner picked off at third base and stranded two more in the inning. They would strand two more in the fourth before Hurricane's offensive explosion.
"That's four or five runs we possibly gave up," Brumfield said.
Wakefield's second home run of the game came in the sixth inning to trim Hurricane's lead to 7-4, but the Knights once again left a pair of runners on base to close out the inning.
Hurricane's Thor Meeks then answered Wakefield's second blast with his own in the top of the seventh to set the final score. Meeks finished 2-for-2 and Hurricane's 2-through-5 batters combined to go 8-for-14 with all eight RBIs.
Sectional action shifts to Hurricane High School now as Cabell Midland (19-8) meets Lincoln County at 6 p.m. today in an elimination game. The winner meets Hurricane at 6 p.m. on Thursday in the first championship game.
HURRICANE 200 050 1 -- 8 8 0
CABELL MIDLAND 021 001 0 -- 4 10 0
Henry and Meeks. Nelson, Hall (4), Adkins (5) and Stapleton. WP -- Henry. LP -- Hall. Hitting: (H) Barber 2-4, HR, 4 RBI; Henry 2-4, 2B, 3 RBI; Meeks 2-2, HR, RBI; Finch 2-4, 2 R. (CM) Wakefield 3-3, 2 HR, 2 RBI; Ash 2-4, 2 RBI; Gaskins 2-3.
7-day Archive
