FAYETTEVILLE -- Off the bat, Connor Clark appeared to have an RBI single.
Thanks to Chris Willard, it instead turned into the first out of a final inning that summed up Nashville's 4-1 win against Shiloh Christian in the 4A State Championship at Baum Stadium on Friday.
Nashville 4, Shiloh Christian 1
Shiloh^000^100^0^—^1^6^2
Nashville^001^111^x^—^^4^9^1
Shiloh Christian’s battery: Brown, Clark (4) and Rhodes. Nashville’s battery: Hanson, Jamison (4) and Smead. W - Hanson. L - Clark. Sv - Jamison. HRs - none.
Clark, the Saints' hottest hitter, represented the tying run when he stepped to the plate with two on and no outs. But Willard made a diving stop on his liner up the middle.
One pitch and a double play later, and Nashville (30-7) was celebrating its second state championship after winning here in 2007.
"All the sudden, you look up and bang-bang they got two on," said Scrappers coach Kyle Slayton. "Then the leadoff guy comes up and he's a good hitter. Man, he barrels one up and Chris just makes a great play to get the force out at second.
"That took the wind out. You could just tell their whole body kinda went limp after that."
The defending state champion Saints' wind completely died on the next pitch when Jake Nelson hit a cue shot to pitcher Zach Jamison, who fired to first to catch Clark in a game-ending double play. Slayton said the Saints (25-8) hit it to the "right player at the right time," calling Jamison "a gutsy performer" after his headsy double play gave the Scrappers' their 16th straight win.
"They've been hot and part of that was being able to make plays like robbing that hit up the middle," said Shiloh Christian coach Moe Henry. "They made plays like that to increase their energy and drain ours, which turned into a state championship for them."
Saints junior starter Landon Brown walked six batters, with all coming after a 94-minute weather delay in the first inning. The delay began with two outs and a 2-2 count on a batter that Brown ended up walking on two straight pitches.
"They came out with a lot of energy," Henry said. "The time the rain delay happened with a batter in the middle of his pitch count may have hurt him, but they were in the same rain delay."
Nashville worked Brown deep into counts to get his pitch count up and he threw 78 pitches in three innings. Slayton figured Brown "may get wild" because he had made three appearances in eight days after throwing 202 pitches in state tourney wins against Arkadelphia and Malvern. Brown struck out seven and allowed one hit, but a leadoff walk and a two-out error led to Nashville's first run in the third.
"I thought he looked like he had thrown 200 pitches in (eight) days," Slayton said. "We're the kind of team that takes a lot of pitches and at this time of year, you can't walk people and you've got to play defense."
After Shiloh Christian tied the score at 1-1 on Braden Mueller's sacrifice fly in the fourth, the Scrappers answered in the bottom of the inning with Willard's two-out, RBI single to regain the lead. They added another run on a sacrifice fly by pinch hitter JR Middleton in the fifth.
Another two-out RBI came when Austin Bowman's high pop up landed safely on the grass between three Saints player in short left center field.
"We had a couple of big two-out hits that scored a run here and there that ended up being big runs," Slayton said.
Sports on 05/20/2017