Tag Archives: MACCC

07 May

into the juco minefield

It’s do-or-die time for eight Mississippi junior colleges who battled through 28 regular season games to reach this stage. The four winners of the best-of-3 playoff series that start today will advance to the NJCAA D-II Region 23 Tournament, where third-ranked Pearl River Community College, regular season champion in the MACCC, and No. 2 LSU-Eunice, six-time NJCAA national champ, await. In the conference playoffs, Meridian hosts Copiah-Lincoln, Itawamba hosts Gulf Coast, East Central hosts Northwest and Hinds hosts Jones. Meridian (29-11), ranked 10th in the latest NJCAA poll, surged at season’s end to claim second place in standings and the No. 2 seed in the playoffs. The Wildcats lost their last game but won eight straight before that, including two big ones against Itawamba, the 3-seed. Meridian is hitting .352 as a team, best in the MACCC. Banks Tolley has carried a big stick, batting .429 with 12 homers. Alec Sparks has been the staff ace, with a 7-1 record and 3.16 ERA. Pearl River, the top slugging (87 homers) team in the state, also leads in pitching (3.90 ERA), but both Hinds and Jones also rank among the top 15 nationally in staff ERA. The six-team region tournament is set for May 17-22 at Herring Park in Poplarville. P.S. Three former major league players were inducted into the Mississippi Community and Junior College Sports Hall of Fame in ceremonies last week in Pearl. Hinds Community College alum Chad Bradford, Pearl River’s Wendell Magee and Meridian’s Tyler Moore were among a large group of inductees from various sports. Bradford, who also pitched at Southern Miss, posted a 3.26 ERA over 12 MLB campaigns and famously pitched for the “Moneyball” Oakland A’s in 2002. Magee, a two-sport star at PRCC and Samford, spent seven years in the majors and batted .247 with 24 home runs. Moore, a Mississippi State alum, belted 30 homers over his five-year career. Current Auburn coach Butch Thompson, who pitched at Itawamba CC, also entered the juco Hall.

26 Apr

a few atta boys

Brandon Woodruff, the former Mississippi State standout from Wheeler, threw six shutout innings to beat the Chicago Cubs at Wrigley Field on Sunday. The Milwaukee ace is 2-0 with a 1.55 ERA and has yet to allow a home run in 29 innings this season.
Pearl River Community College wrapped up the junior college state championship with a sweep of Northeast on Sunday. Gulfport’s Tate Parker hit two homers, a grand slam and then a seventh-inning game-clincher, Nos. 14 and 15 on the year, in a 13-5 win in Game 1 at Poplarville. The third-ranked Wildcats are 33-7 and 23-5 MACCC.
Decatur’s Kemp Alderman, a freshman, blasted a walk-off bomb for Ole Miss on Saturday as the Rebels salvaged the third game of their SEC series against LSU.
Collinsville’s Ben Ethridge threw a three-hit, 11-strikeout shutout at Western Kentucky on Saturday, helping Southern Miss take three of four in the C-USA series.
Lucedale’s Logan Tanner hit a two-run homer off Jack Leiter on Saturday as Mississippi State handed the Vanderbilt ace — and potential No. 1 MLB draft pick — his first loss of the season. Rowdey Jordan’s leadoff blast got the Bulldogs rolling.
Brandon High took down previously undefeated Madison Central 7-6 on Friday. The Jaguars, No. 3 in the latest MaxPreps national poll, are now 24-1. The Bulldogs are 20-7.
Three former Mississippi Braves pitchers notched wins as MLB starters on Friday: Huascar Ynoa for Atlanta, Mike Minor for Kansas City and Alex Wood for San Francisco. A fourth, John Gant, got a W for St. Louis on Saturday.

22 Apr

juco numbers

There are four Mississippi junior colleges in the latest NJCAA Division II Top 20 poll, led by No. 3 Pearl River (31-7), which leads the MACCC standings at 21-5. Itawamba, ranked 11th, is 19-7 in the league, No. 9 Meridian 18-8 and No. 19 East Central 17-9. A bunch of individuals also show up in the national stat charts, most notably perhaps Jones College left-hander Dalton Rogers, who leads the nation with 91 strikeouts over 57 innings. The Northwest Rankin High product is 3-4 with a 3.16 ERA for the 22-18 Bobcats. The top-ranked hitter from the state is Mississippi Delta’s Gage Little, batting .481, ninth in the D-II stats. Pearl River’s Graham Crawford stands tied for second nationally with 14 home runs; teammates Tate Parker and Kasey Donaldson have 13 each for the power-laden Wildcats, who top the country with 80 homers. Parker is fifth in D-II with 53 RBIs. Jones’ Murray Hutchinson leads the state with 25 stolen bases, ranking ninth in the nation. Pearl River’s Landon Gartman has eight wins (and no losses), tied for second in the national stats, and a 1.87 ERA, which ranks third. Meridian’s Alec Sparks has seven wins. Northeast’s Alex Potter has five saves, tied for third in the country. Jones’ Garrett Langrell and Gulf Coast’s Alex McWhorter have four saves each. P.S. Hinds has named Dan Rives, a former Eagles assistant and Delta head coach, as the 2022 successor to Sam Temple, who has taken the Clinton High job for next season. Temple has 439 wins over 16 seasons in Raymond, with three state championships and two juco World Series trips on his ledger.

09 Apr

clash of titans

It’s not exactly King Kong vs. Godzilla, but Saturday’s doubleheader at Cresap Field in Fulton throws together the two current behemoths of Mississippi juco baseball. Pearl River Community College, ranked No. 2 in NJCAA Division II, is 14-4 in the MACCC standings, tied for first with Itawamba, ranked 11th. Not surprisingly, both of these clubs are loaded with hitters and hurlers boasting great numbers. The host Indians are led by Riley Davis, batting .484 with 24 RBIs and 28 runs, and Lane Domino, who has nine homers, 28 RBIs, 35 runs and a .398 average. On the mound, Brady Davis is 4-0, Will Armistead 3-0 and Collin Babin 4-2. PRCC features Tate Parker, hitting .398 with 10 homers and 41 RBIs, and Graham Crawford, .349 with nine bombs and 33 RBIs. Wildcats ace Landon Gartman is among the nation’s leaders at 6-0 with a 1.71 ERA. Sam Hill is 4-0, 3.18. … East Central is third in the league at 14-6 but coming off a crushing sweep at the hands of Hinds, which outscored the Warriors 21-3 behind five homers on Tuesday. ECCC visits Northwest (13-11) on Saturday. Meridian and Gulf Coast are both 12-6.

29 Mar

laser show

The tone was set on opening day at Dub Herring Park in Poplarville. The Pearl River Community College Wildcats slugged five home runs in a doubleheader sweep of East Central CC on Feb. 3, and the laser show has continued all season for a team that has climbed to first place in the state standings and to No. 2 in the national poll. PRCC (21-5, 11-3 MACCC) has 53 home runs, third-most in NJCAA Division II. They hit eight in one game in February. The Wildcats are slugging .577 as a team. They take a seven-game win streak into today’s big doubleheader at Hinds (14-10, 12-6). Pablo Lanzarote leads the Eagles with eight homers. PRCC has four players with eight or more. Kasey Donaldson and Graham Crawford each hit their ninth on Friday, two of the four the team belted in a 10-0, 5-inning win against Holmes. Tate Parker also has nine; Von Seibert sits at eight and Eric Newsom at five. That makes for a pretty scary lineup. But the Wildcats can also scratch out a win, as they did in Game 2 against Holmes on Friday. They got just five hits, pushed across the winning run in the sixth on a sac fly and used some gritty pitching from Dakota Lee to close it out. “What makes this league so tough and people don’t understand about junior college baseball is you play a doubleheader and there is no guarantee Game 1 is going to be like Game 2 and vice versa,” PRCC coach Michael Avalon said in a school release. Landon Gartman tops the team’s pitchers with a 4-0 record and 2.10 ERA; the other three regular starters are a combined 10-1. P.S. East Central is second in the league standings at 14-4, and Itawamba is third at 10-4, percentage points ahead of Hinds.

16 Mar

juco showdown

Pearl River Community College, ranked No. 3 in the country but standing just sixth in the MACCC, gets a chance to validate its poll position today when Copiah-Lincoln, ranked 20th but tied for first in the conference, visits Poplarville for a twinbill. PRCC (15-5 overall, 5-3 MACCC) features a ton of power, its 40 home runs ranking second among all NJCAA Division II schools. Von Seibert has eight homers and Graham Crawford and Tate Parker, both batting over .400, have seven bombs apiece. The Wildcats also can run a little: 71 stolen bases. Landon Gartman has been PRCC’s best pitcher; he is 3-0 with a 2.52 ERA and 31 strikeouts over his five starts. The Wildcats swept a non-conference doubleheader from Co-Lin in Wesson in early February, but the Wolves (12-8, 8-2) have been on a roll of late, with nine wins in their last 11 games. Marquez Hudson and Tom Biggs have sparked the Co-Lin attack. Hudson is batting .338 with five home runs, Biggs .414 with 24 RBIs. Jacob Spinks (2-2, 5.97) is the top Co-Lin starter. P.S. The other state schools ranked in the NJCAA DII poll released Monday are Meridian (No. 10), Jones (14), Itawamba (16) and East Central (19). ECCC is 8-2 in conference, tied for first with Co-Lin.