RINGGOLD, Ga. - The motto Ringgold High baseball coach Brent Tucker holds to is a good explanation of why his Tigers are now in the Class AAA final four after a quarterfinal sweep of Appling County on Wednesday night.
"My main goal is to make sure the best team we face all year is not in the state tornament," said Tucker, whose 32-5 Tigers ran a gauntlet of tough nonregion opponents. How tough?
"Every team we played in our nonregion schedule reached the playoffs," Tucker said. "Four of them, I believe, are still alive."
All that goes to explain why the Tigers barely broke a sweat in getting past their quarterfinal-round opponent, Appling County. After surviving a late scare to earn a 3-2 opening-game win, the Tigers used home runs and timely hitting to earn an 8-0 victory in the nightcap behind Nathan Camp's four-hitter.
And when those timely hits are home runs, so much the better. The Tigers hit two in each contest in their final home games of the 2018 season.
Which brings up another key part of Tucker's philosophy.
"To go deep into the playoffs, you've got to do two things," the happy coach acknowledged. "You've got to match your opponent on the mound, and second, you have scratch out runs when you have the chance. We left some men out there tonight, but we also scored some clutch runs."
Tucker's son, junior Holden Tucker, set the tone with his complete-game pitched win in the opener. He was staked to a 2-0 lead thanks to homers from Camp and Gavin Hollis, two seniors in their final home games. But a third run scored innocently enough when Brayden Broome was hit by a pitch with the bases loaded in the bottom of the sixth.
That last one suddenly mattered when, with two out in the seventh, Appling catcher Chase Storm rocketed a two-run homer over the center-field wall.
But Holden was able to get a routine fly ball to Ty Jones in right to end the sudden drama.
In game two, right-hander Camp was able to avoid any such drama, the Tigers getting a leg up early when Andre Tarver teed off on a Jason Ammons fastball and line a two-run, opposite-field home run to make it 2-0 after only an inning.
"He's our guy," Holden Tucker said of his fellow junior.
A bases-loaded walk to Dylan Wright made it 3-0, but the big blow was a towering two-run off-field homer by Daulton Schley after Tarver created havoc on the bases and drew a balk from Ammons. Some otherwise inconsequential late runs for the Tigers became a big deal when Appling County coach Jeremy Smith made a federal case of a bungled check-swing ruling.
An awkward few moments where he refused to take his team off the field after three outs put an odd feel to the final innings. But like everything else this season, Tigers just worked their way past it and left it behind them.
Westminster (22-11) will host the Tigers on Tuesday at a time to be announced.
Contact David Jenkins at sports@timesfreepress.com.