The second day of the TCCAA/NJCAA Region VII tournaments at Chattanooga State began with a big surprise for the host softball team and ended with a mild pleasant surprise for the host baseball team.
The top-seeded and nationally 12th-ranked Lady Tigers lost 4-3 to ninth-seeded Roane State, which went on to lose 8-0 to fifth-seeded Cleveland State and faces Chattanooga State (49-11) again today at 12:30 with elimination at stake. The Lady Tigers bounced back with a 4-0 defeat of Columbia State, and even later - pushing midnight - the seventh-seeded baseball Tigers outlasted No. 2 seed Motlow State, 10-8.
"They made some really good plays, and we didn't make some plays we usually make," Lady Tigers coach Blythe Golden said about Roane's Lady Raiders (19-31).
"We just battled back," Golden, the TCCAA coach of the year, said after the night-game win. "We had good pitching. Our offense is still a little slow, but we had good at-bats, just not much falling. We'll keep swinging."
The win over Columbia State (33-20-1), which earlier lost 3-1 to No. 2 seed Walters State, must be followed by five more in a row for Chattanooga State to return to the national tournament. But the Lady Tigers did have a 35-game winning streak in the regular season.
Walters faces (38-11) third seed Volunteer State (33-11) at 10 this morning, and the winner will meet Cleveland State (25-20) at 5:30 in the winners-bracket final. The Walters/Vol loser plays Dyersburg State at 3.
Cleveland's Shiane Stockwell pitched a one-hitter and went 3-for-4 with two runs scored and one batted in against Roane, while Macy Bryant was 3-for-4 with three RBIs, Grayson Brown was 2-for-3 with an RBI and a run and Hailey Galvan and Courtney Mooneyham each was 2-for-4. Emily Yell scored two runs.
In the simultaneous baseball tournament, Cleveland State came from behind to clip Dyersburg State 7-6, nationally top-ranked Walters State beat Jackson State 13-3 and Vol State downed Columbia State 4-2 before Chattanooga State's win over Motlow in which Hayden Lock hit a three-run double in the eighth inning and Noah Fitzgerald went 3-for-5 with a ninth-inning triple and subsequent run scored.
Rhett Baldwin was 5-for-5 with a double, an RBI and a run scored and Noah Hill, Hunter Oliver and Joey Roberson each was 2-for-5 for Cleveland State's Cougars (37-16), who allowed Dyersburg four runs in the third inning and trailed 6-1 before scoring one in the seventh. The big moment for the Cougars came in the eighth with the bases loaded, two outs and a 3-2 count on Hill, whose pop-up was dropped by the second baseman for a three-run error.
With one out in the top of the ninth, Logan Peterson was hit by a pitch and Roberson singled to left field with Peterson taking third on a bobble, and Baldwin singled in the tying run. A passed ball and a wild pitch with Trey Vanderpool batting led to the go-ahead run, and relief pitcher Greg Tye followed his three strikeouts in the eighth with a 1-2-3 ninth for the win.
Ladarius Williams was 3-for-4 with an RBI and Reed Smith tripled, doubled, drove in two runs and scored two for Dyersburg, the 2017 region champion.
"We've done a really good job all year long of staying in games and coming back," Cleveland State coach Mike Policastro said. "We just kept grinding it out like we were never out of it."
He acknowledged the late help from the Eagles but said the Cougars gave Dyersburg four runs in the third after a bad throw wasn't saved by the first baseman.
"The dugout was in the ballgame the whole game - all nine innings," agreed Baldwin, who said of his own batting performance, "I was just keeping it simple - put the ball in play and see what happens."
He and Policastro praised not only Tye's pitching but Jackson Etter's as the starter, subbing for Hooper Mills, who had a slight "shoulder-back issue" according to Policastro. Mills played first base the ninth inning.
Roane State's softball team had only four hits off Chattanooga State's Jenna Edwards and Morgan Marshall but a three-run fifth inning that included two unearned runs, and Edwards allowed six walks with her seven strikeouts in 4 1/3 innings. Kaleigh Wynne was 2-f0r-3 with a home run and an RBI single for the Lady Tigers, and Madison Crabtree was 2-for-3 with the other RBI.
Wynne, honored minutes after the loss as both the player and pitcher of the year in the TCCAA, pitched a five-hitter with eight strikeouts against Columbia and scored on Kiley Longmire's seventh-inning homer. Alyssia Bowen plated Kayla Woody with a sacrifice fly in the second inning, and Woody singled Katie Cheeseman home in the third. Woody was 2-for-4 and Shelby Penning was 2-for-3.
Sabrina Gilliam had two hits for Columbia against Chatt State and the RBI against Walters, whose Paige Calloway and Emma Seagrave were 3-for-3 and 2-for-3 with a home run each.
In a 6-3 elimination win over Motlow, Dyersburg's Kaylee Luckett was 1-for-2 with a homer, three RBIs and two runs, while Hailee Mullins was 3-for-3 with two RBI doubles and Emily Hooper was 3-for-4. Kendall Durard had a two-run homer and a single in defeat.
Contact Ron Bush at rbush@timesfreepress.com.