East Lincoln pounds Cherryville for SPC tourney title
CHERRYVILLE — This wasn’t quite what the Southern Piedmont 1A/2A Conference had in mind when it decided to resurrect the league baseball tournament.
East Lincoln pounded Cherryville 22-1 in five innings Saturday in an unexpectedly ugly game to cap the league’s first tournament since 2006.
The fourth-seeded Mustangs registered 11 hits, but the game got out of hand more because of Cherryville blunders. The second-seeded Ironmen committed seven errors (at least one in every inning), walked 14 and hit two by pitch. They walked in six runs and plated another run on a hit batter.
“I can’t explain it,” Cherryville coach Scott Heavner said. “I’m not going to make any excuses about what happened here.”
East Lincoln (17-9) scored seven runs in the third for an 8-0 lead, then sent 17 batters to the plate in an 11-run fourth. Cherryville fans began to wonder if their team has ever suffered such a one-sided defeat.
Jarrett Ross and Eian Fowler each delivered a two-run double to highlight the East Lincoln offense. Mustangs coach Chris Matile began substituting liberally in the fourth inning.
“We feel confident in the things we’re doing now,” Matile said. “It’s kind of all coming together and hopefully we can stay at this level because we’re going to have to.”
East Lincoln heads into the playoffs with a full head of steam, having knocked off regular-season champion North Lincoln in Friday’s semifinals before dispatching the runner-up a night later. The Mustangs will take the league’s No. 2 Class 2A playoff seed into Friday’s first-round matchup at Trinity, the No. 2 seed out of the PAC 6.
East Lincoln starter Brandon Brownlow (3-3) took a no-hitter into the fourth inning, when Kevin Elmore broke through for a double. Cherryville avoided the shutout in the fifth when Dylan Hastings slugged a solo home run against David Keener.
Ryan Craft, the first of four Cherryville pitchers, took the loss.
“We played good all week and we’ve had a good tournament up until tonight,” Heavner said. “There just wasn’t a lot of effort tonight, and maybe that’s one of those things when you play four games in a week, one on a Saturday. I don’t know. I’m a little dumbfounded.”
The Ironmen continued to play without one of its best players in Thomas Bess (illness). Cherryville also lost Blake McLeymore to a sprained ankle earlier in the week, and Morgan Costner is day-to-day with a back injury
Cherryville (14-8) now waits until Wednesday to learn its wild-card opponent for the first round of the 1A state playoffs. The Ironmen will host that game on Friday.
You can reach Phillip Gardner at 704-869-1843.
Southern Piedmont 1A/2A Conference baseball tournament
Thursday’s first round
(1) North Lincoln, bye
(4) East Lincoln 7, (5) Bessemer City 3
(2) Cherryville 15, (7) Highland Tech 0
(3) West Lincoln 6, (6) Lincolnton 5
Friday’s semifinals
East Lincoln 7, North Lincoln 2
Cherryville 7, West Lincoln 3
Saturday’s championship
East Lincoln 22, Cherryville 1, 5 inn.
