Mustangs trample Golden Tigers
By Brannon King for the FCT
In a battle of defending state champion baseball teams, the Madison Academy Mustangs swept a doubleheader from the Russellville Golden Tigers. The Mustangs, who won three-straight 3A championships before moving up this year to 4A, took game one over the two-time defending 5A champs RHS by a 5-2 score and followed that up by taking game two 1-0 in Madison Feb. 25.
Game one featured a matchup of future University of South Alabama pitchers, Chad Wray of Russellville and Jake Christa of Madison Academy. Christa went five innings to get the win, giving up two runs on a Colin Garrison RBI triple in the fourth inning that at the time put RHS up 2-1. Garrison was thrown out at the plate trying for an inside-the-park homerun.
Wray worked four innings for Russellville and took the loss, allowing three earned runs, and he struck out four batters. Rudy Fernandez came on in relief of Wray and pitched two scoreless innings, recording four strikeouts.
The Mustangs got on the scoreboard first when Justin McCaghren drove in Reid Homan in the bottom of the third inning. Then after Garrison’s triple put RHS up 2-1 in the fourth, Madison Academy answered with four runs of their own in the bottom half of the inning. Two Mustangs scored as a fly ball got over the head of the centerfielder, Judd Ward, who was looking into the sun. Dylan Murphy drove in a run on a single and later scored on a pitch that got to the backstop.
Russellville got hits from Ward, Garrison, Fernandez, Noah Gist and Landon Ezzell.
Game two went the Mustangs’ way as Sam King got the win over Russellville’s Cody Greenhill. Both pitchers went the distance and gave up only two hits each in the game. King had five strikeouts, while Greenhill registered 11. Houston Kitterman and Greenhill had the only hits at the plate for RHS (1-3).
The lone run of the game came in the fourth inning when Murphy tagged up on second base and advanced all the way around to score on an outstanding sliding catch in the right field corner by Garrison. Knowing a run was going to be hard to come by against Greenhill, the Madison Academy coach decided to gamble and send the runner home. It paid off, as the throw back in from the outfield went toward the middle of the diamond instead of toward the plate.
“We just failed to execute defensively on one play right there, and it made the difference in the game,” Russellville Head Coach Chris Heaps said. “The mistake that we made was throwing the ball back toward the middle of the field instead of going directly to the plate with it, which cost us about probably 60-80 feet of throwing distance when a guy beats the throw by about 3 feet.”
The Russellville bats struggled to get things going against the Mustangs in the two games, which made it hard to overcome some defensive miscues. “We’re just not hitting the ball like we’re capable of,” Heaps said. “We’ve got some guys that can really hit; they’re just really not hitting right now.”
Despite the tough-luck loss, Greenhill had another dominating performance on the mound for Russellville. “He’s a strike-thrower, and he’s gotten so much better with his breaking ball and his change-up,” Heaps said of his senior right-hander. “He didn’t throw his change-up a lot today, but his fastball and breaking ball were working very well.
“Cody is going to give you a chance to win no matter who you play. No matter how big or small the game is, he’s going to be right there. We just didn’t pick him up; we did nothing to help him today. We have some big games coming, and we’ve got to figure out a way to score some runs.”
