Tag Archives: juco baseball

06 May

names to know

Slade Wilks, Southern Miss: Extended his hitting streak to 21 games on Sunday, going 2-for-3 with three RBIs, to spark USM to a 6-5 curfew-shortened win over Coastal Carolina, completing a sweep of the Sun Belt Conference series.
Jordan McCladdie, Jackson State: Went 5-for-8 with six RBIs and four runs to pace JSU (29-16, 12-11) to a SWAC sweep, 22-3 and 7-4, over Mississippi Valley State. Game 3 is today in Jackson.
Noah Magee, Delta State: Threw four shutout innings in relief as the Statesmen, who scored four times in the first inning, held off top-seeded Lee 5-3 to stay alive in the GSC Tournament at Oxford, Ala. DSU, now 30-21, gets Valdosta State today.
Blaise Priester, Meridian Community College: Banged out four hits, including a homer, and knocked in four runs to propel MCC to a 15-8 win over Copiah-Lincoln CC and into the NJCAA Division II Region 23 Tournament. (No. 1-ranked East Central and No. 13 Jones face winner-take-all Game 3’s today.)
Andrew Fischer, Ole Miss: Drove in five runs, three on a clutch double in the ninth inning, but couldn’t prevent the Rebels from suffering a brutal 10-9 loss at Auburn. (The Tigers, 4-20 in SEC play, scored the winning run on a wild pitch, a steal and a passed ball.)
Khal Stephen and Jurrangelo Cijntje, Mississippi State: Each notched his seventh win, combining to strike out 14 batters while allowing just four runs over 12 innings, as the Bulldogs took the first two games of their weekend series vs. Alabama. (Alas, State could not complete the sweep, falling 10-5 on Sunday.)

05 May

blast from past

Joining a list that includes Mark McGwire can be pretty impressive, at least when it comes to hitting dingers. Mississippi State alum Brent Rooker blasted two home runs in one inning on Saturday, becoming the first Oakland player to do so since McGwire in 1996. Rooker, born in 1994, told mlb.com he grew up a St. Louis Cardinals fan in Germantown, Tenn., and followed McGwire during the slugger’s time with the Redbirds. “Being able to do anything the same as him is a huge accomplishment, and something that’s really cool for me,” Rooker said. Rooker’s bombs came in a 10-run third inning that propelled the surprising A’s to a 20-4 win over visiting Miami. Oakland is 17-17 with six straight victories. Rooker, a 2023 All-Star who also homered on Friday, is batting .240 with eight homers and 20 RBIs in 22 games, having spent 10 days on the injured list last month. As a BTW: Ex-Ole Miss standout Nick Fortes hit his first homer of the year for the lowly Marlins, 9-26. Also overshadowed by Rooker’s exploits was a four-hit game by another former Bulldogs masher, Nathaniel Lowe, who led Texas to a 15-4 rout of Kansas City. Lowe started the season on the IL and is batting .333 with a homer and four RBIs in 13 games since his return. He picked up two of those RBIs on Saturday. “I’m three weeks late to the party,” he told mlb.com, “so I have to get going.” The Rangers, 18-16 and second in the American League West to Seattle, visit division rival Oakland for a four-game series beginning Monday. P.S. William Carey University beat Blue Mountain Christian for the SSAC Tournament championship, the third tourney title in the last four years for coach Bobby Halford, who has a shelf full of trophies over his 39-year career. The Crusaders (34-14 with eight straight wins) will host an NAIA Opening Round tourney next week. BMC also gets an NAIA bid. … Delta State won an elimination game in the GSC Tournament and will play again today against Lee in Oxford, Ala. … Hinds Community College swept host Northwest Mississippi CC in their MACCC playoff series and advances to next week’s NJCAA Division II Region 23 Tournament in Poplarville. No. 1-ranked East Central, No. 13 Jones and Meridian all won their best-of-3 series openers on Saturday and will play again today.

24 Apr

stat freaks

In the hitting-heavy MACCC, where runs tend to flow like the mighty Mississippi, a pair of state natives are tied for the national lead in scoring. Brady Magee, from Lake, has scored 66 runs for No. 2 East Central Community College, matching the total of Jeff Ince, a Brandon native, who plays for No. 3 Pearl River CC. ECCC has state’s RBI leader, Mo Little (Brandon), whose total of 67 ranks second in the NJCAA Division II stats. Hollis Porter (Hurley) of PRCC leads the league in homers with 19, which also ranks second in the nation. No. 12 Northwest has the MACCC’s top base stealer, Jacob Hill (Byhalia), with 35, which ranks ninth nationally. The state’s leading hitter is Gulf Coast’s Marc Stephens, batting .450 for the Bulldogs. Bryce Fowler (Madison) of PRCC leads in total hits with 76, ranking second in the nation. His teammate Porter has 72 knocks and Hinds’ Thomas Marsala 70, both sitting in the top 10 in the country. There is some quality pitching out there: Luke Lirette of Southwest leads D-II in total strikeouts with 104 (in 65 2/3 innings), and seven other MACCC pitchers rank in the top 10 in K’s. Beau Bryans (Madison) of 13th-ranked Jones is No. 2 in the nation in K’s per nine innings (14.63). ECCC’s Luke Cooley (Waynesboro) ranks seventh in the nation with a 1.86 ERA; he is 7-0. Meridian’s Landon Waters (Duck Hill) is second in strikeouts (95) and 10th in ERA (1.97). … Key games on today’s schedule: ECCC (44-4) hosts Southwest; PRCC (43-7) visits Jones (35-11); Northwest (35-13) travels to Itawamba; and Meridian is at Gulf Coast.

17 Apr

clash of titans

For one day at least — make that today — the center of the state’s baseball universe is Dub Herring Park in Poplarville. Pearl River Community College (42-5), ranked No. 2 in NJCAA Division II and riding a 29-game win streak, hosts East Central CC (40-4), which is ranked No. 4 and started the season with 31 straight wins while rising to No. 1. The host Wildcats are 22-0 in the MACCC; ECCC’s Warriors are 16-4. PRCC hits .345 as a team with 77 home runs. The big bopper in the lineup is Hollis Porter, raking at .431 with 18 homers and 56 RBIs. The Wildcats’ pitching staff features a 2.43 ERA and three eight-game winners, led by J.P. Robertson (8-0, 2.28). Mo Little, a preseason All-America pick, leads ECCC with a .372 average, nine homers, 62 RBIs and 16 steals. Luke Cooley is the Warriors’ ace: 6-0, 1.89 ERA, 13.3 K’s per nine innings. Today’s twinbill starts at 3 p.m. … Two other big doubleheaders are on today’s MACCC docket: No. 12 Jones College (33-9) visits Meridian, which was ranked 13th in preseason, and No. 15 Northwest (31-12) hosts East Mississippi.

31 Mar

have a week

Belhaven University’s road show this past week was a rousing success. The NCAA Division III Blazers went 3-1, clinching the Maloney Trophy Series with a blowout win against Millsaps and then taking two of three from conference foe Piedmont. Under first-year coach Andrew Gipson, a former Blazers player, Belhaven is 13-10 and 3-2 in Collegiate Conference of the South. The week started on Tuesday with a 19-6 victory at Millsaps’ Twenty Field, a game that featured a stellar hitting performance by Eli Britt and a jaw-dropping 11 stolen bases by the Blazers. Britt, from Petal by way of Meridian Community College, was 4-for-5 with six RBIs and five runs. Tristan Pearson, from Biloxi and Jones College, homered and drove in three for BU. On Thursday, the Blazers dropped the opener at Piedmont 10-5 despite a four-RBI game from Jackson Prep product Owen Abney. But the staff stopper, senior Brett Sanchez, stepped up on Friday with a four-hitter in a 4-1 victory. Sanchez (3-1), a Golden Spikes Award candidate, struck out 14 and walked none in the complete game. Hunter Harrell, a Southwest CC transfer, homered for the Blazers. In Saturday’s rubber game, Harrell rapped two doubles and drove in a pair of runs in a 7-4 win. The bigger star of the day was reliever Kade May (from Florence via Copiah-Lincoln CC), who worked the final seven innings and yielded just two runs. The road show goes on next week: Belhaven visits Millsaps again on Tuesday, then travels next weekend to play a CCS series against Covenant. The Blazers have stolen 92 bases, a big reason they are averaging 5.7 runs a game despite hitting just .263.

28 Mar

rising river

East Central Community College currently holds the No. 1 ranking in NJCAA Division II, but Pearl River CC is No. 5 with a bullet. The Wildcats swept two games from Hinds on Tuesday to run their win streak to 19. They are 32-5 and 12-0 in the MACCC, alone in first place. ECCC, which won its first 31 games of the season, lost for the second time in three outings on Wednesday, falling to Copiah-Lincoln 3-1 in Game 2 of a twinbill. ECCC is 32-2, 8-2. Seventh-ranked Jones beat Gulf Coast twice on Wednesday to improve to 29-5, 11-1; and No. 18 Northwest sits at 24-8, 9-1, after a sweep of Holmes. But Pearl River, which won the national championship two years ago, is the team of the moment. The ‘Cats belted 11 homers in a sweep of Itawamba on Saturday, then got great pitching on Tuesday from Thomas Crabtree — the league’s reigning pitcher of the week — and J.P. Robertson, former Germantown High star, in the 9-2, 6-1 sweep of Hinds. Hollis Porter, named the NJCAA D-II hitter of the week on Wednesday, homered in Game 1 and drove in three runs in Game 2. The Mississippi State transfer from Hurley is batting .425 with 15 homers, four shy of the school single-season record. P.S. Baseball America’s first projected field of 64 for the NCAA Tournament features four state schools, with Jackson State joining Southern Miss, Ole Miss and Mississippi State. UM and MSU — the national champs in 2022 and 2021, respectively — missed the tournament in 2023.

24 Mar

take cover

Those weren’t UFOs — or UAPs, if you prefer — flying around Dub Herring Park in Poplarville on Saturday. Those were baseballs, and 11 of them went out of the yard for home runs as No. 5 Pearl River Community College battered Itawamba CC 13-3 and 18-1. Nine different players homered for the Wildcats (30-5, 10-0 MACCC), with Hollis Porter — the Mississippi State transfer from Hurley — going deep twice to push his national-best total to 14. Alex Wade also hit two bombs. “I was really proud of our guys. They swung it really well,” PRCC coach Michael Avalon said in a school release. The Wildcats had 26 hits all told in the 15 innings of play. Not to be overlooked are the dominant efforts of winning pitchers Caleb Dyess and J.T. Schooner. … Meanwhile on Saturday, East Central CC, the No. 1 team in the latest NJCAA Division II poll, saw its 31-game win streak snapped by Northwest, which beat the Warriors 8-7 in Game 2 of a twinbill in Decatur. ECCC is 31-1, 7-1 in the league. The unranked Rangers are 21-8, 7-1. Tenth-ranked Jones swept Coahoma to move to 27-5 and 9-1.

20 Mar

there and here

The Los Angeles Dodgers won the first game of the MLB season today in Seoul, South Korea, beating San Diego 5-2. Mississippi Braves alum Evan Phillips registered the first save of 2024. And Mississippian Lance Barksdale, working the plate, registered the first umpire’s interference call of the season, which he called on himself in the first inning for inadvertently disrupting the catcher’s throw to second base on a steal attempt. … On this date in 1981, former big leaguer Gerald “Gee” Walker died at age 73. The Gulfport native and ex-Ole Miss star has a historic connection to MLB’s opening day, having hit for the cycle on April 20, 1937, for Detroit. It is the only opening day cycle in major league history. … The projected starting pitchers announced Tuesday for MLB’s stateside version of opening day include two Mississippi natives (Justin Steele and Garrett Crochet), two M-Braves alums (Spencer Strider and Alex Wood) and two ex-Biloxi Shuckers standouts (Freddy Peralta and Corbin Burnes). … In a 3-hour, 4-minute game that “featured” 12 pitchers, a 14-pitch at-bat, 17 hits and 20 strikeouts, Ole Miss beat Southern Miss 8-3 Tuesday night at Trustmark Park in Pearl. The most eye-catching number from the game was 3,269 — the announced attendance, surely a disappointment to all involved. … At Trustmark tonight, NCAA Division III rivals Millsaps and Belhaven will play the first game of the Maloney Trophy Series. The opener of the three-game series was originally scheduled for March 5 at Millsaps’ Twenty Field but was rained out. … At Starkville, Dakota Jordan hit yet another home run, his 11th in 22 games, as surging Mississippi State whipped Memphis 17-9. … Jackson State swiped five more bases, boosting its season total to a national-best 67, in a 13-3 rout of Arkansas-Pine Bluff at Braddy Field. Jordan McCladdie got two bags Tuesday and has 15 for the year for JSU, 16-4 with six straight wins. … Top-ranked East Central Community College swept a doubleheader at Hinds (12-2 and 5-0) to improve to 30-0. No. 5 Pearl River took two from No. 12 Meridian (14-2 and 5-2) to improve to 28-5 with 15 straight wins. (ECCC and PRCC are slated to meet April 17 at Poplarville.) … Big league veteran Mike Mayers, an Ole Miss product, has signed a minor league deal with Toronto. He pitched in the Kansas City and Chicago White Sox systems in 2023. … Former Petal High star Demarcus Evans, an erstwhile big leaguer, has signed with Yucatan of the Mexican League. Evans did not pitch in a game in 2023 because of injury.

13 Mar

head of the class

The first test for East Central Community College since it jumped to the head of the class could be a challenging one. The undefeated Warriors, ranked No. 1 in the NJCAA Division II poll released on Monday, take on No. 15 Meridian today in a doubleheader at the Clark/Gay Complex in Decatur. Of course, the Warriors are fairly accustomed to big games. ECCC is 25-0, 2-0 in the MACCC, and was ranked 10th in the preseason poll coming off a state and region championship season that ended in the juco World Series. Brady McGee, from Lake, leads the attack with a .439 average, seven homers, 28 RBIs, 36 runs and 13 steals. Barret Rogers is at .414 with four homers and 33 RBIs and Brandon’s Mo Little checks in at .390 with six homers, 36 RBIs and 11 bags. On the bump, Waynesboro’s Luke Cooley is 3-0 with a 1.57 ERA and 13.8 strikeouts per nine innings. Marbin Lezcano, from Panama, is 2-0 with a 3.58. Meridian (17-7, 2-0) is led by Blaise Priester (.393, five, 27) and Grenada’s Landon Waters (4-0, one save, 1.33). … Pearl River (22-5, 2-0) is ranked No. 5 in the new poll and will host Southwest today. Jones (20-4, 2-0), unranked in preseason, is now 13th as it heads into a twinbill at Hinds. P.S. Lewisburg High, the top-ranked prep team in the state, will play in the Southeastern High School Baseball Classic, a four-team event which starts Friday at Trustmark Park in Pearl. Oak Grove will play Christian Brothers from Memphis in Friday’s opener at 4 p.m., and at 6:30, Lewisburg takes on Houston, another Memphis school. The winners will play Saturday, with the winner there advancing further in the tournament. Nationally ranked Lewisburg features preseason All-America and pro prospect Samuel Richardson.

08 Mar

and they’re off

We are several weeks into the junior college season, but the race for the all-important conference championship has yet to start. The green flag will wave on Saturday with six doubleheaders on the docket. East Central Community College, which would have to be considered the pole-sitter, opens on Sunday. The Warriors, the defending champs, coast into MACCC play with a 23-0 record and will take on sputtering Coahoma (4-11) in Clarksdale. On Saturday, Pearl River — ranked No. 3 in the NJCAA Division II preseason poll — takes a 20-5 record into its games at Northeast (14-9). Elsewhere: Holmes (8-8) is at Jones (18-4); Delta (6-8) is at Gulf Coast (14-6); Hinds (12-11) is at East Mississippi (14-7); Southwest (12-13) is at Northwest (13-5); and Itawamba (7-10) visits Meridian (15-7). Copiah-Lincoln (10-12) opens league play on March 13 at Gulf Coast. … The top hitter in the state is Northwest’s Cade Leatherwood, batting .500. Gulf Coast’s Marc Stephens is at .487. Pearl River’s Hollis Porter leads the league in homers with 10, and East’s Evan Radford has eight. ECCC’s Mo Little has a state-best 34 RBIs and six homers. Top pitchers include ECCC’s Luke Cooley (3-0, 1.57 ERA, 44 strikeouts); Pearl River’s J.P. Robertson (5-0, 2.42); and Jones’ Beau Bryans (4-0, 1.93).