Mavs exit tournament
The postseason run ended for the Anderson County Mavericks on Tuesday as they fell at Gibbs to the Eagles by a score of 8-4.
Gibbs scored twice in the first inning to take the lead but the Mavericks answered with a run in the top of the second when catcher Zeke Meyers drew a leadoff walk. Cole Foust entered the game as a courtesy runner and moved to second on a wild pitch. He scored when Jackson Muncy drove a single to center.
In the second the Eagles sandwiched a walk and a hit batsman with three hits to build their lead to 6-1.
That score held until the fourth when the Mavericks’ Ryan Moog reached on a one-out hit and later scored on a double by Jonathan Hodge to make it 6-2.
Gibbs got the run back in the bottom of the fourth to make it a 7-2 game. The Eagles added a run in the fifth to make it 8-2.
In the top of the seventh, Rhett Bowling reached on a leadoff walk. Andy Fox doubled to put runners on second and third. Denver Hubbard singled to score Bowling and move Fox to third. Trey Noe then hit a sacrifice fly to deep left to score Fox to cut the Gibbs lead to 8-4 but that was all the Mavericks could muster.
Hubbard finished the game 3-4 with a double and an RBI while Fox was 1-4 with a double and a run scored.
Muncy was 1-3 with an RBI.
Muncy took the loss. He went one inning and allowed two earned runs on three hits.
Hunter Melton, Colton Zenni, Sheev Patel, and Preston Seiber also saw action on the mound for the Mavericks.
Anderson County Head Coach Ben Downs used four pitchers in the game and explained his reasoning after the game.
“Our approach was to come out of this loser’s bracket and we were going to have to win three more games - Gibbs and Powell twice. So we were just trying to piece it inning by inning and if somebody got hot, let them go a little bit longer. We did that against South Doyle a couple of weeks ago and it was effective. We just gave up too many freebies early on,” he said.
“The bounces just didn’t go our way tonight. It’s a tough way to end the year but I’m proud of our guys for competing,” said Downs.