RINGGOLD, Ga. — Brent Tucker had to correct himself. Following Thursday night’s nonregion 6-1 win over Northwest Whitfield, the Ringgold baseball coach was critiquing Colton Cross’s six innings of four-hit, eight-strikeout pitching when he realized what he had just seen was better than he thought.
“He threw 108 pitches, and though he had a hard time finding his release point early, he settled down,” Tucker said. “Colton wasn’t as sharp as we’ve seen him before, but — just as I sit here and say he can be better — he was good enough to hold them to one run. You can’t complain about that.”
While Cross wasn’t dominant — he had only one perfect inning and stranded six baserunners — he may have uncovered something that could pay dividends down the road.
“I started finding it around the fourth inning,” the junior right-hander said. “I tried out a new pitch (a two-seam fastball) and it turned out to be the only pitch that was working. We’re doing really well right now. We’re playing together as a team, and hopefully we can keep that up when region play begins.”
Cross helped his own cause with a two-run home run in the fifth for the Tigers’ final scoring. He had just a one-run lead after Northwest’s Kane Gibson drove in Hunter Key with a fourth-inning single, but a suddenly potent bottom of the Ringgold order gave him some insurance in the bottom half.
Erik Hull lined the second of his three hits to left field with one out, and Adam Weldon followed with a single. Following a wild pitch, Corey Kafka plated Hull with a fielder’s choice and Austin Parrish scored Kafka with a groundout. Cross and Hull, who came on to pitch a scoreless seventh, finished things off.
“We’ve been concentrating a lot this week on getting quality at-bats, and I saw a lot of good execution tonight,” Tucker said. “I think we had two strikeouts today, so we’re putting the ball in play. We’re swinging it better every day, and we need to get it in gear because region play begins next Friday.”