Tag Archives: juco baseball

05 Mar

bombs away

The long ball is all the rage in the MACJC this season. Brandon Parker of Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College leads the nation’s Division II jucos with 10 home runs, and four other state players rank among the top seven. Parker, a 6-foot-1, 205-pound freshman out of West Harrison High, belted No. 10 on Saturday against Baton Rouge CC at MGM Park in Biloxi. He is batting .500 with 29 RBIs (tied for the national lead) for the 13-1 Bulldogs. Northwest’s Brant Blaylock has six bombs in his last seven games and seven on the year in 10 games. Gulf Coast’s Dylan Menhennett and East Mississippi’s Anthony Hickman have hit six homers apiece, and Meridian’s Blake Morris has five, tied for seventh in the country. … Itawamba and Holmes lost over the weekend, meaning there are no unbeatens left in the state. ICC is 11-1, as is top-ranked Jones County. East Central and Pearl River are 9-1. Conference play, which has not yet begun, promises to be a wild ride.

21 Feb

juco jottings

He hit one home run last season at Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College and says he never hit one in high school. But there sits Dylan Menhennett, leading all NJCAA Division II batters with five homers. “I’ve been working out non-stop, just getting better,” he said in a release by the school. “I’ve been swinging every night, coming up here (to Farris Field) and getting extra work.” The third baseman from Biloxi is 11-for-18 with 12 RBIs for the undefeated Bulldogs, who have pounded their opponents 74-12. Gulf Coast is among three MACJC teams off to a 6-0 start. … Jones County JC, preseason No. 1 in the NJCAA poll, is also 6-0 and has outscored its opposition 51-17. Luke Hudson, one of several freshmen in the Bobcats lineup, is 9-for-16 with two homers and seven RBIs. … Itawamba CC moved to 6-0 with a sweep of Columbia State on Tuesday, notching career wins No. 501 and 502 for longtime coach Rick Collier. The former Delta State player has one Juco World Series appearance, two region titles and two state titles on his ICC resume. … East Central CC is 4-0 after sweeping Bevill State on Tuesday. The Warriors won their first two games last weekend on walk-off hits by Kenneth Scott and Hunter Harper. Harper homered on Tuesday. … Hinds CC, the defending Region 23 champion, is 5-1 after rolling over Bishop State 13-2 and 9-4 on Tuesday.

25 Nov

now hiring

There figures to be plenty of interest in the Jones County Junior College coaching job, which came open Monday when Christian Ostrander was named pitching coach at Louisiana Tech. JCJC sits in the heart of an area with many strong prep programs. It has a first-rate facility in Community Bank Park. And Ostrander built a winning tradition, going 255-109 in seven seasons with two state championships and a national runner-up finish in 2011. Among the players returning from last year’s 30-16 club is NJCAA Division II second-team All-America catcher Mason Irby, a Southern Miss signee. JCJC officials hope to have Ostrander’s replacement named at the December Board of Trustees meeting, according to a school release. Ostrander is a Monroe, La., native who played at Delta State when current LaTech coach Greg Goff was the pitching coach there. P.S. Kudos to former Jackson Mets star Dave Magadan, who is expected to be named hitting coach for the Arizona Diamondbacks.

03 May

aces are wild

Potent pitching performances popped up all over the place in the opening round of the MACJC postseason as the top four seeds survived and advanced. Third-ranked Hinds Community College, the regular season champion, swept Southwest Mississippi to earn the host role for the four-team state tournament that begins Thursday at Moss Field in Raymond. The Eagles’ Randy Bell moved to 10-0 on the year with a complete-game (seven innings) effort in a 14-3 win in Game 1 on Friday. Houston Case (7-1) allowed just one hit in four innings of a 13-3 win in Game 2 on Saturday. East Mississippi completed a sweep of Mississippi Delta behind Andrew Crane’s four-hitter in a 4-0 victory. Austin Towles buoyed Northwest with seven strong innings in the 7-3 clincher in Game 2 against Jones County. And in the only series that went the full three games, Meridian’s Austin Harrison allowed one run in seven innings as the Eagles run-ruled East Central 11-1 in the decisive contest. The bracket for the double-elimination state tournament has yet to be set, though it figures that Hinds will open with 4-seed Meridian and EMCC would play Northwest. P.S. Former Mississippi Gulf Coast CC standout Joey Butler was called up to the big leagues today by Tampa Bay, replacing injured Desmond Jennings, an Itawamba CC alum, on the active roster.

01 May

watch for it

The defending MACJC Tournament champion is Jones County Junior College, which enters the 2015 postseason as the league’s No. 6 seed. The Bobcats might qualify as a sleeper. They were once ranked No. 8 in the country and have won 30 games, one of only three teams in the league to reach that number. They open postseason play at third-seeded Northwest Mississippi CC in an intriguing best-of-3 series that starts today. The Bobcats’ top hitter is Mason Irby, who is batting .390 with 50 RBIs. But Irby might play a bigger role on defense; the freshman out of Southeast Lauderdale High is JCJC’s catcher. He’ll face a Northwest team that swiped 111 bases this year, including Dalton Dulin’s nation-leading 42. Jamell Newson got 19, LeeMarcus Boyd 15 and Clay Casey 11. … In the other opening series, No. 8 seed Southwest Mississippi is at No. 1 Hinds, No. 7 Mississippi Delta visits No. 2 East Mississippi and No. 5 East Central is at No. 4 Meridian. Hinds slipped from No. 1 (with LSU-Eunice) to No. 3 in the NJCAA Division II poll released Wednesday. Meridian is ranked 15th, East Mississippi 16th. … Itawamba CC missed out on the postseason but did sweep MACJC individual honors from the last week of the regular season. The Indians’ Tanner Poole went 15-for-27 with 12 RBIs, 10 runs and four stolen bases in six games and T.J. Watson won twice and posted a 1.42 ERA in his two outings.

28 Apr

jucos ready to rumble

Hinds Community College, the No. 1 team in NJCAA Division II and the regular season champion in the MACJC, will open postseason play against 8-seed Southwest Mississippi. The best-of-3 series starts Friday at Moss Field in Raymond. Sam Temple’s Eagles are 36-5, 15-1 at home. The Bears, who made the postseason in Ken Jackson’s first year as coach, swept a doubleheader from the Eagles on April 16 at Smith-Wills Stadium. In the other postseason openers, league runner-up East Mississippi will host Mississippi Delta at Scooba; Northwest gets Jones County JC in Senatobia; and Meridian welcomes East Central. The four series survivors will play a double-elimination tournament for the state championship at a site TBD, then comes the Region 23 tourney at Eunice, La. P.S. The last weekend-plus of the regular season in the jucos produced quite a highlight show. To wit: Northwest’s Clay Casey belted three home runs in a twinbill split on Saturday against Meridian. … Jones County’s Will Hazen threw his second straight shutout on Saturday as the Bobcats completed a sweep of Coahoma. … East Mississippi got grand slams from David Pimentel and Chris McCullough in a victory on Saturday over Gulf Coast, which won the nightcap on a Tyler Rachel walk-off homer. … Pimentel belted two more homers (that’s 13 for the year) in an 11-1 win on Monday that capped a sweep of Delta. … But the most impressive feat was delivered by L.D. Coney, a freshman at Southwest. He hit for the cycle in Game 2 of a doubleheader sweep over Northeast on Sunday. Coney, from McComb, hit his first home run of the season as part of the cycle.

21 Apr

taking notes

Jackson State’s Melvin Rodriguez is having a season worthy of Ferriss Trophy consideration. The senior from Puerto Rico leads NCAA Division I in batting. He currently sits at .446 with five homers, 44 runs and 52 RBIs for the Tigers (25-15, 11-6 SWAC). He also has a .505 on-base percentage and 11 steals in 12 tries. … Southern Miss (21-14-1, 9-8 C-USA), leads its conference in ERA (2.82) and fielding (.974). Those stats may bode well for USM’s chances of winning in the postseason, when those aspects of the game are magnified. … Ole Miss ranks last in the SEC in hitting at .247 and 13th in runs (187). Mississippi State is ninth in batting at .273 and sixth in runs (230). The schools rank 10th and 11th in ERA, State at 4.14, UM at 4.15. It’s little wonder both have struggled to win in the league. … Delta State has 36 homers this year, its most this decade, the school reports. Ethan Gill leads the Statesmen with eight. … Millsaps (25-10 with a game tonight against Mississippi College) will host Rhodes, Hendrix and Sewanee this weekend in a Southern Athletic Association double-elimination tournament. The winner advances to the SAA’s best-of-3 championship series. The Majors are 19-4 at Twenty Field. … Belhaven University improved to 6-0 against Tougaloo this season with a 14-4 win on Monday. BU is 32-20 overall but just 10-16 in the Southern States Athletic Conference heading into a season-ending series at rival William Carey this weekend. WCU is 25-19 (heading into a twinbill at Tougaloo today) and 16-9 in the league. Tyler Richardson continues to shine for the Crusaders, with a .374 average, 43 runs and 28 RBIs in 40 games. … Hinds Community College snatched first place in the MACJC with its dramatic sweep of Northwest on Sunday. The NJCAA Division II top-ranked Eagles (31-4) are 18-4 in the league and take on Jones County JC (14-8) in Raymond on Wednesday. Northwest (16-6) visits East Mississippi (16-6) on Wednesday, and Meridian (also 16-6) has a twinbill at last-place Coahoma that day. … A bunch of Hinds players have nice numbers, but none are more impressive than Austin Sanders’. The Ole Miss signee is 3-0 with nine saves and a 1.48 ERA.