Hough rallies to beat Hopewell, avenge Monday loss, grab share of league title
Hopewell looked like it had the Queen City 3A/4A conference championship locked up Friday night, and then the Titans didn’t.
After Hopewell looked solid for four innings, the Titans starting pitcher began to tire. Hough took advantage, scoring five runs in the top of sixth inning, en route to a 6-2 win.
Hough avenged a loss to Hopewell earlier this week and earned a share of the league title. The schools will participate in a coin flip Saturday morning to determine the league’s No. 1 seed for the playoffs.
For awhile, it didn’t look like that would be necessary.
Hopewell appeared to be mounting a big inning in the bottom of the second, but back-to-back strikeouts by Hough starting pitcher, Tyler Baird, ended the inning leaving three stranded for the Titans.
Baird, just a freshman, showed flashes of his potential tonight tallying seven strikeouts before he was relieved by Tad Hudson in the sixth inning. He couldn’t quite get his footing at the plate going 0-3 on the night, but he made up for it with his clutch pitching, getting out of several jams.
“I don’t think we played our best baseball tonight,” Hough coach Jimmy Cochran said. “I was proud of the fight that the guys showed. I thought we battled through some adversity there early. There were some competitive at-bats where we weren’t getting the barrel to the baseball and we found a way to do that later on.”
Cochran knows that his team needs to get back to playing the way they have all season if they want to make a run into the postseason.
“I think we just have to play our brand of baseball,” Cochran said. “We have kind of gotten away from that with some injuries and some guys moving around to different spots. But, when we play our brand of baseball we are tough to beat, so we have to get back to doing that and we will.”
After Baird was pulled after the fifth inning, Cochran called on Tad Hudson, who doubles as the school’s starting quarterback for the football team. Hudson took a few batters to get settled in, but once he did the game was all but sealed.
“I was just excited,” Hudson said. “I always love pitching. I was just excited to get a chance to close it out. I was a little wild at times but found the spots at times I needed to.”
Hudson also agreed with coach Cochran’s remarks about cleaning up the Huskies’ play heading into the postseason.
“Last game we played Hopewell we struggled a little bit in the field but hitting hasn’t been there the past few games,” Hudson said. “We just get back and start grinding again and we will be fine.”
THREE WHO MADE A DIFFERENCE
Aiden Evans, Hough: The leadoff batter for the Huskies went 3-for-4, bringing in two runs with a deep shot into centerfield in the sixth inning.
Tad Hudson, Hough: Despite struggling a bit at the plate going 1-3 on the night, Hudson came in as relief pitcher and closed the game out in the final two innings securing two strikeouts along the way.
Billy Baxter, Hopewell: Baxter threw a really great game until the sixth inning when his fatigue began to be apparent. He threw six strikeouts and gave up no runs through five innings. He was pulled in the sixth after the third Husky run was scored.
WORTH MENTIONING
▪ Just one of Hopewell’s runs was an earned run as one runner was able to score on a wild pitch.
▪ Both teams had an inning where they had the bases loaded with just one out and ended up leaving all three runners stranded.
WHAT’S NEXT
There will be a coinflip Saturday morning to decide who is the Queen City 3A/4A Champions and who will get a higher seed heading into the postseason.
Scoring Summary
Hough: 0 0 0 0 0 5 1 -- 6
Hopewell: 0 0 1 1 0 0 0 -- 2
WP: Tad Hudson (2.0 IP, 2 K, 0 BB, 0 ER)
LP: Chase Soesbee (1.0 IP, 1 K, 1BB, 1 ER)
PHOTOS: Hough at Hopewell baseball
