East Hamilton got the one it had to have but couldn’t nail down the one it wanted.
The Hurricanes punched its ticket for the Region 3 tournament with a come-from-behind win over Central but came up short in their bid for the District 6-AA championship.
That honor went to Red Bank, which chafed at a 1-0 deficit until Ryan Potter took a hanging curve high and deep to give his team a 2-1 lead on the way to an 8-1 victory.
“That was so big, a back-breaker,” said Red Bank coach Bumper Reese, whose Lions will be at home Monday to host the 5-AA runner-up.
McMinn Central is coming out of the 5-AA losers-bracket but will host Polk County today with that championship on the line. East Hamilton will travel on Monday to the 5-AA winner in the other Region 3 semifinal.
East Hamilton pitcher Christopher Moore, a former Red Bank player who transferred when his dad was hired as an East Hamilton coach, kept his former teammates off-balance through the first four innings.
“He frustrated us. He was hitting his spots well and we were chasing pitches out of the strike zone,” Reese said.
Moore allowed just one hit, a double by Hunter Holmes, through the first four innings.
“I’m very proud of Christopher. I’m tickled about what he did,” East Hamilton coach Steve Garland said. “He kept them off balance. If he threw 95 pitches, 94 of them were really good.”
Moore tired in the fifth and was replaced but East Hamilton pitchers then couldn’t find the strike zone.
In the sixth, they hit one and walked three straight, setting the stage for T.J. Butts’ bases-clearing triple to right.
Red Bank Gunter Barton picked up his sixth win without a loss, limiting the Hurricanes to two hits and giving up no hits over the final four innings.
“Sometimes he can be a knucklehead, but he is also a bulldog,” said Reese, who had a heart-to-heart with his pitcher in the third inning after an errant pickoff throw led to the Hurricanes’ lone run.
The championship game was the first where Red Bank was extended to seven innings. They had won by the 10-run rule in each of their previous tournament outings.
“We needed that,” said Reese, who knew from his long history with Garland, the former Soddy-Daisy coach whose teams had legendary battles with the Lions when both teams were in 6-AAA.
“Garland’s teams aren’t going to quit, and what we saw from them tonight was a great, scrappy team,” he said.
Central moved into the championship game — and secured its region trip — with a 5-4 victory over Central that didn’t come until there were two outs in the bottom of the seventh. Logan Templeton stroked a two-out, two-run single to score the tying and winning runs.