Opp vies for area title, right to host in playoffs

Published 12:00 am Thursday, April 8, 2010

Opp baseball coach Michael Cassady said his team is going to work even harder to get better in the hopes to win its area title, despite ending a 14-game win streak, losing to Greenville last Thursday and Brewbaker Tech Monday night.

“We’ve won 14 games in a row — not that it’s good to lose — maybe it was a little bit of a wake up call for us,” he said. “We’ve had so much success. It’s good to get us back down to reality to work hard.”

The Bobcats (19-4, 7-1 in Class 4A, Area 2) fell to Greenville 7-3 and to Brewbaker Tech 3-2.

If Opp wins tonight, it will claim the area title, and the right to host the first round of the Class 4A state playoffs next Friday.

And if the Bobcats lose, then they will travel to play UMS-Wright in Mobile.

“This is very big,” Cassady said. “We’re playing for home field — both of us.”

Cassady said if his team does three things well, then they’ll have a chance at winning the game.

“We’ve got to throw strikes, we’ve got to be patient at the plate, and we’ve got to cut down on the errors,” he said.

In the Greenville game, Opp only recorded three hits in the entire game.

Dilan Ziglar had two hits and Gavin Free had one for the Bobcats.

“They had eight hits, but four of those hits were on 0-2 pitches, which killed us,” Cassady said.

In Monday night’s game with Brewbaker Tech, Opp’s Britt Wilson pitched seven innings with five hits and had six strikeouts in the loss.

“He did a great job on the mound,” Cassady said. “We did a better job of pitching on Monday. We had several 0-2 counts and we hit our spots, but we played away and flat.

“Right now, I’m just telling them we’ve still got to compete.”

Ziglar had two hits, Free had one hit, Jantzen Flowers and Lance Robbins had one hit each.

Tonight’s doubleheader against Brewbaker Tech start at 4 p.m.