Tattnall peaking as it faces a gritty Prince Avenue team in GHSA Class A Private title series

By Michael A. Lough

The Sports Report

centralgasports@gmail.com
 

          Prince Avenue Christian has been a GHSA athletics program a while longer than Tattnall has.

          But the Trojans are one up on the Wolverines in GHSA state championships, Tattnall winning the Class A private baseball championship in 2016. And the Trojans’ move from GISA to GHSA offered almost no transition in baseball.

          Tattnall won that title in its second year and reached the championship series in its third year, and now again in its fourth year. The Trojans changed associations, but kept the same standards.

          “This is my 20th year as the head coach,” Tattnall’s Joey Hiller said. “This is definitely a special team, regardless of whether they win it or don’t. We’ve seen this team really come together, and the chemistry has improved so much over the course of the year. But it’s a special team.

          “But with what we’ve done here, they have to win ot leave their mark and their legacy, because they will be judged on whether there’s a banner out there with their year on it, because there are nine of them out there right now.”

          The teams face off in a doubleheader at 5 p.m. Tuesday at Mercer's OrthoGeorgia Park, with a third game if needed at 5 p.m. Wednesday.      

          Phil Roberts has the Wolverines in their first baseball final in his first year as head coach, being named a little more than a year ago.

          The Wolverines made strides the previous two seasons, reaching the second round in 2017. Prince Avenue made a huge jump in this year’s playoffs.

          In the quarters, they lost 12-0 to defending champ Savannah Christian, then won a pair of low-scoring one-run games. In the semis, they opened with a 9-8 loss to Holy Innocents, and rebounded with 3-2 and 4-1 wins.

          After opening the season 4-3, they got on a roll and are 24-10.

          So it’s doubtful they’ll be too stressed by anything that happens Tuesday.

          “They have been real resilient,” Roberts told the Oconee Leader/Athens Banner-Herald. “The past two series have gone three games. They have had to bounce back after losing game one and have done a really good job with that.”

          Trey Felt had won the second game in the past three series.

          Both teams had a first-round bye, Tattnall as the 3 seed and PAC as the 8 seed.

          The statistical oddity in this series? The Wolverines are 6-2 in the playoffs, but they have been outscored 34-30, thanks to two big first-game losses in series.

          The 32-4 Trojans, on the other hand, have a 61-13 advantage in runs, with three mercy-rule wins in six games.

          That first number wouldn’t have been a surprise three months ago, and the second would have been.

          “The mound,” junior Trey Ham said about the preseason question mark. “It’s been a little bit of a surprise, but at the same time, it’s not, because they get out there and put in the work and work hard every day.”

          Luke Laskey and Logan Fink are seniors, but the boost has come from sophomores Brooks Gorman and Dawson Brown.

          Gorman is four innings below Laskey for the season, and Fink has 11 more than Brown. Gorman has a pair of saves to go with a 10-0 record. Fink is 6-1 and Brown 4-2.

          When half of your staff is made up of sophomores, yes, there will be some early concerns. Not this year.

          “This year worked out a little different than we expected,” Hiller said. “We expected this year to be a year when we put up really, really big offensive numbers.”

          Noted Ham: “We were looking to come out and the best hitting team that’s been around here in awhile.”

          Didn’t happen.

          They lost 3-2 to Jefferson, then Aquinas came up with a 5-0 shutout and Stratford won 3-1, all in the first 15 games. The bats had occasional big games, but the pitching staff was squelching opposing offenses. The first team to score more than five runs against the Trojans came in their last loss, 9-7 to Strong Rock Christian on April 10 in the second game of a doubleheader, Tattnall winning the first 13-1.

          “We really struggled early on (offensively),” said Ham, fourth on the team with a .351 average and tied for third with four homers. “It’s been good to get the bats going toward the end of the year, because the pitching’s definitely been there all year.”

          The “worst” stretch? It came in the playoffs when opponents got four runs in back-to-back games, only the second time the Trojans have had eight runs in two consecutive games scored on them.

          “I’ve always got a lot of confidence in what our coaching staff does from a developmental standpoint, even with the younger guys,” Hiller said. “It didn’t really surprise me that Brooks Gorman and Dawson Brown did what they’ve done this year. We knew what they were capable of.

          “It’s just that those guys hadn’t been really thrown into the fire, so to speak. That happens at some point. You just trust that they’ve done the work and put in the time, mentally and physically, to handle that when they get in there.”

          Fink and Laskey also stepped into their roles as 1-2 in the rotation and offered no dropoff. And eventually, those bats started living up to expectations.

          Since a 14-1 win over at Class 7A Camden County on March 29, the Trojans have cracked the 10-run mark 12 times in 16 games and won by 10 runs or more in nine of those 12.

          Fink leads the Trojans with a .375 average, with Gorman, Austin Marchman and Ham over .350, and pro prospect Logan Simmons a point short of that mark.

          A key but overlooked piece is Miles Morris, a versatile junior.

          “He’s a guy that flies under the radar,” Hiller said. “He hits down in the order this year, seventh. He’ll be at the top of the order next year. What he does is he’s the guy that jumps around, utility.

          “He plays third when Brooks Gorman is on the mound, second when Luke Laskey is on the mound, he plays first when Logan Fink is on the mound, he plays right when Dawson Brown’s on the mound.

“He’s done a fantastic job.”

          Versatility, steady pitching all year, and an offense that on a roll has Tattnall believing it can avenge last year’s sweep by Savannah Christian Day in the championship series.

          “Once we won the region championship and started the playoffs, we’ve really come together,” Ham said. “I don’t think there is any stopping us.”