Statesboro sweeps Worth County in opening round

SYLVESTER — Having already witnessed his team drop Game 1 of the opening round of the GHSA Class AAAA state playoffs, Worth County head coach Will Smith watched as Statesboro’s Blakely Brown sent a changeup over the left field wall in the bottom of the sixth inning of Game 2.

The back-breaking three-run homer culminated a series of misfortunes for the Rams, who began the week by not being able to practice for days because of heavy rain and then ended it by giving up five home runs in two games.

Turning from the field to the bullpen, Smith offered two simple words that expressed his feelings of the dagger home run.

“That hurt.”

That’s how it felt for the Rams, whose season ended after the Blue Devils swept the best-of-three playoff series Saturday at Sylvester’s Pope Park.

As painful as it was for Smith to see Statesboro put up 17 runs in two games, the Blue Devils’ run production still fell second to the primary reason Worth County is finished with 2014 spring baseball.

“The thing that got us here was our defense, catching and throwing,” explained Smith, whose team lost 8-1 in the first game and 9-6 in the second. “If you want me to sum up the two games — we made a couple of errors early that allowed them to break it open and they turned double plays on us all night. Their defense was better than our defense.”

It did not help that senior outfielder Dontate Cooper, one of the team’s best baserunners, went down in the first inning of Game 1 with a pulled quadriceps. The injury forced the Rams to shift players around, a move Smith had not anticipated.

“You never like to go into the state playoffs and have a kid to go down in the first inning, and then have to revamp everything,” Smith said. “In our situation, one move here is like making five different moves because everybody has to move around. So we had some new faces in the game, and (Statesboro) had a few seniors that really took advantage of our youthful mistakes.

“But we cannot run ourselves out of innings. We had opportunities to steal a few bases, but when you are down three or four it takes a little bit of your aggression away.”

Trailing 4-0 in the top of the second inning, Worth County’s Shelby Cox scored the team’s first run off a sacrifice fly. Tripp Goff also came home courtesy of a passed ball.

From there the Rams squandered a few scoring chances, including coming away empty in the third after two batters reached base with no outs.

“We just have to put in more work during the offseason because leaving early hurts,” junior standout Denzel Gowdy said. “We got caught up in the moment and made errors we usually don’t make. Everyone is tight when playoffs come around so I just tried to keep everybody loose.”

Gowdy was responsible for the Rams’ third and fourth runs, singling home Jonathan Cirullo and Austin Jackson in the fourth inning. Aaron Franks tried to keep his team alive with a two-out, two-run double in the top of the seventh inning, but after that the book was closed on Worth County and its season.

“We were a little nervous and uptight, and we have to do a better job of working those things out,” Cirullo commented.

Smith added: “We came out with a couple of opportunities to get some outs early and we didn’t. The inner confidence that we carried over from the end of the season, we lost it somewhere. I don’t know what happened, but it’s because of the mistakes we made.”