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Quade Smith

Baseball falls in MACJC state championship game

Quade Smith (3)

The Hinds Community College Eagles nearly pulled off an improbable comeback by coming through the loser's bracket to force a winner-take-all championship game in the Mississippi Association of Community and Junior Colleges (MACJC) state baseball tournament on Saturday in Booneville, but the Eagles ran out of gas and fell to Jones County Junior College after a late Bobcat surge.

Hinds (32-18) now advances to the Region XXIII tournament starting on Thursday, when the Eagles will take on perennial power Louisiana State University (LSU)-Eunice, at 2 p.m. in Ellisville on the Jones County campus.

The Eagles played a grueling five game in three day stretch that saw them win the opening game, 13-4, against East Central Community College before being defeated, 5-1, by Jones County in Friday's winner's bracket game.

Matt Jones (Madison), who hit four home runs in the tournament and now has a team-leading nine home runs on the year, provided the lone run in Friday's loss with his solo home run late in the ballgame.

Houston Case (Brookhaven) took the loss to fall to 2-3 after going four-plus innings and allowing four runs. Gage Posey (Brookhaven) was terrific in relief of Case, allowing only one earned run and four hits, while not walking a single hitter and striking out three.

The loss forced Hinds to once again take on East Central, which turned out to be a see-saw affair, one in which Hinds won, 9-8.

Jones and Caleb Upton (Natchez) each hit home runs in the victory, while Quade Smith (Brandon) picked up two hits.

Michael Jolly (Mobile, Ala.) was solid on the mound to start the game before the game was turned over to the bullpen. Randy Bell (Woodville) earned his seventh win of the year in relief and Austin Sanders (Madison) picked up his fifth save of 2014.

The narrow victory over East Central put the Eagles in the championship series, but Hinds would be forced to defeat Jones County twice on Saturday in order the claim the championship.

Hinds won the first game on Saturday, 7-6, in a game for the ages and one filled with heroics and clutch play.

The Eagles jumped ahead 2-1 in the second inning on singles by Toler Robinson (Pearl), Jonathan Washam (Sterlington, La.) and Smith before the Bobcats would tie things at two in the top half of the third.

Hinds would then jump back ahead, 5-2, in the bottom of the third, led by back-to-back homers from Chase Lunceford (Clinton) and Upton.

Jones County stormed back in the fourth inning to tie the game at five, before Hinds would take the lead for good in the bottom of the fourth inning when Lunceford  (who had three hits) had a two-out single to score Luke Reynolds (Forest), who would later give the Eagles an insurance run in the sixth with a two-out solo shot to put Hinds ahead, 7-5.

Jones County would score its final run in the eighth inning and threatened to score again in the final frame, but Sanders got a crucial 6-4-3 double play to end the game to earn him his sixth save of the season, as well as forcing a seventh MACJC state tournament game.

Bell was superb in relief in game one on Saturday, throwing 4.1 innings of relief work to earn his second victory in as many games and improve to 8-4.

In game one, Lunceford homered, doubled and singled for Hinds. Reynolds homered and singled, while Marshall Boggs (Cleveland), Washam and Smith had two singles each.

The championship in finale was one that turned against Hinds quickly in the seventh inning and was much closer than the final score of 14-3 indicated.

Smith hit a run-scoring double in the fourth inning to tie the game at one before Jones County answered with two runs in the bottom half to make it 3-1.

 Matt Jones hit home run number four of the tournament in the top of the fifth to cut the lead to one at 3-2, before the Bobcats scored three runs to go ahead for good, 6-2.

The Eagles would post a major threat in the top of the seventh by scoring a run and having the bases loaded with no one out before the Bobcats got out of the rest of the inning unscathed and were up, 6-3, going into the bottom of the seventh.

Hinds had trouble stopping the bleeding in the next inning, however, and after eight runs, the Bobcats of Jones were crowned as the 2014 MACJC state champions.

Derek Martin (Flora) took the loss in relief.

Reynolds, Upton and Casey Echols (Braxton) each had two hits in the second game.
 
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