Apr. 22—It hasn’t been the easiest season for the South Aiken baseball team.
The T-Breds have some youth and inexperience in key spots, and some of their veteran players have had to make adjustments to either take on new roles or add to the ones they were already filling — all while competing in South Carolina’s region of doom.
Close losses in region play — five by three runs or less — started to pile up, as South Aiken was finding itself still needing to learn how to finish off victories. Head coach Gary Asbill has seen the lightbulb start to flicker on for his guys, and they proved that Monday night with an 8-6 win at Aiken in what was the typical rollercoaster affair between the two rivals.
Monday’s game, and Thursday’s return visit from the Hornets, are the ones that shouldn’t require any extra motivation from the coaching staff. Having that late-season boost, with one more Region 4-AAAA game waiting next week at Brookland-Cayce, could be coming at the perfect time with the postseason looming.
“A big thing I think we’re battling is there’s been a lot of times in games, we’re up late and then all of a sudden the door starts closing a little bit,” Asbill said. “We just hadn’t quite been able to get in there and throw some strikes there late. As we’ve progressed, guys are starting to kind of figure out how we have to win. We know that if we get ahead early, we can start putting pressure on guys. It’s a little difficult for us to do it when we’re behind, based on our personnel right now.”
South Aiken (7-13, 3-9) surged to a 7-1 lead through three innings and then held on as Aiken rallied in the fourth and fifth to cut the lead to a single run. The T-Breds held the Hornets scoreless in the sixth and seventh despite having runners in scoring position, and a key insurance run was added in the top of the seventh to stretch the margin to two runs.
“This game here, it’s easy to fight in, being a rival,” Asbill said. “I knew for a fact that Coach (Preston) Dawson and those guys, they weren’t going to stop. I think the biggest thing is, throughout the year, us understanding it’s not so much what other teams do. It’s can we play catch? Can we field the routine ball?”
South Aiken did a lot of the routine things right Monday, in turn forcing Aiken to make some mental errors. Asbill pointed to a trio of defensive plays made by freshman Jack Ziegler at shortstop on hard-hit balls, with Ziegler getting the out on two of them and knocking the third one down and keeping it on the infield dirt to hold the runner at third. Those are plays the T-Breds weren’t making early in the season, which contributed to some of those frustrating losses.
“It’s like the game’s slowing down for those guys,” Asbill said. “Now that we’re realizing that, if we just take care of what we have to do, it doesn’t really matter what they do. They then have to execute. We essentially put the ball in their court and say, ‘Here it is. Go.'”
Ziegler also played a key role in scoring that run in the top of the seventh to give the T-Breds some breathing room and alter the coaching strategies in the bottom half of the inning. Ziegler was at the plate with nobody on and two outs, and on an 0-2 pitch he singled and then moved up to second on a wild pitch. Moments later, he easily scored when senior Stephen Platte smoked a double to the center-field wall.
Still, Aiken had one last rally, putting runners at the corners with two outs. Asbill called in Tucker Bryan from right field to get the final out, and he delivered with a three-pitch strikeout to end the game.
Platte went 3-for-5 at the plate, Dune Staniszewski walked three times, Ziegler was hit by a pitch twice, Bryan had two hits and Nick Starlings again made an impact on the rivalry with a two-run double. That was all done in support of starter Ryker Hite, plus Thomas Baker and Bryan in relief — a true all-hands-on-deck kind of night, and the kind of thing Asbill is starting to see more of from his team.
“Thomas Baker’s been somebody that we’ve been able to go to throughout the year,” he said. “His role has kind of been a merry-go-round type thing. He might be in right field. He might be out of the pen. He might have to start. But I’ve watched him progress and get better.
“The big one, the confidence there late, was Tucker Bryan. He’s pitched some, but in the back of my mind, and this is where I give my assistant coach Caleb Shealy a lot of props, sitting there after we made the change, he looked at me and said, ‘Hey, Coach, that’s three batters in a row he’s been 3-2. You need to think about the potential of a passed ball, potentially hitting someone.’ So, right then, I said, ‘Yeah, we need to go to a strike-thrower.’ Tucker Bryan came in and did just that.”
The playoff picture is starting to take shape, with the Class AAAA playoff opener scheduled for May 5. The T-Breds are in seventh in the region standings, but by no means are they out of the hunt. The size and strength of Region 4-AAAA are such that Asbill feels South Aiken is “sitting pretty” in terms of getting an at-large spot. There’s still a lot of baseball left, and the T-Breds still have a couple more chances to draw a more favorable spot in the bracket.
“I tell you, I’m starting to see it,” Asbill said. “The confidence, it’s not so much, ‘Rah rah.’ It’s more of just, ‘All right, we can handle this.’ They’ve been hungry for a long time, and they’ve dealt with adversity throughout this year. I think how they’ve handled it is correlating into a little bit of success late for us.”
It hasn’t been the easiest season for the South Aiken baseball team.
The T-Breds have some youth and inexperience in key spots, and some of their veteran players have had to make adjustments to either take on new roles or add to the ones they were already filling – all while competing in South Carolina’s region of doom.
Close losses in region play – five by three runs or less – started to pile up, as South Aiken was finding itself still needing to learn how to finish off victories. Head coach Gary Asbill has seen the lightbulb start to flicker on for his guys, and they proved that Monday night with an 8-6 win at Aiken in what was the typical rollercoaster affair between the two rivals.
Monday’s game, and Thursday’s return visit from the Hornets, are the ones that shouldn’t require any extra motivation from the coaching staff. Having that late-season boost, with one more Region 4-AAAA game waiting next week at Brookland-Cayce, could be coming at the perfect time with the postseason looming.
“A big thing I think we’re battling is there’s been a lot of times in games, we’re up late and then all of a sudden the door starts closing a little bit,” Asbill said. “We just hadn’t quite been able to get in there and throw some strikes there late. As we’ve progressed, guys are starting to kind of figure out how we have to win. We know that if we get ahead early, we can start putting pressure on guys. It’s a little difficult for us to do it when we’re behind, based on our personnel right now.”
South Aiken (7-13, 3-9) surged to a 7-1 lead through three innings and then held on as Aiken rallied in the fourth and fifth to cut the lead to a single run. The T-Breds held the Hornets scoreless in the sixth and seventh despite having runners in scoring position, and a key insurance run was added in the top of the seventh to stretch the margin to two runs.
“This game here, it’s easy to fight in, being a rival,” Asbill said. “I knew for a fact that Coach (Preston) Dawson and those guys, they weren’t going to stop. I think the biggest thing is, throughout the year, us understanding it’s not so much what other teams do. It’s can we play catch? Can we field the routine ball?”
South Aiken did a lot of the routine things right Monday, in turn forcing Aiken to make some mental errors. Asbill pointed to a trio of defensive plays made by freshman Jack Ziegler at shortstop on hard-hit balls, with Ziegler getting the out on two of them and knocking the third one down and keeping it on the infield dirt to hold the runner at third. Those are plays the T-Breds weren’t making early in the season, which contributed to some of those frustrating losses.
“It’s like the game’s slowing down for those guys,” Asbill said. “Now that we’re realizing that, if we just take care of what we have to do, it doesn’t really matter what they do. They then have to execute. We essentially put the ball in their court and say, ‘Here it is. Go.'”
Ziegler also played a key role in scoring that run in the top of the seventh to give the T-Breds some breathing room and alter the coaching strategies in the bottom half of the inning. Ziegler was at the plate with nobody on and two outs, and on an 0-2 pitch he singled and then moved up to second on a wild pitch. Moments later, he easily scored when senior Stephen Platte smoked a double to the center-field wall.
Still, Aiken had one last rally, putting runners at the corners with two outs. Asbill called in Tucker Bryan from right field to get the final out, and he delivered with a three-pitch strikeout to end the game.
Platte went 3-for-5 at the plate, Dune Staniszewski walked three times, Ziegler was hit by a pitch twice, Bryan had two hits and Nick Starlings again made an impact on the rivalry with a two-run double. That was all done in support of starter Ryker Hite, plus Thomas Baker and Bryan in relief – a true all-hands-on-deck kind of night, and the kind of thing Asbill is starting to see more of from his team.
“Thomas Baker’s been somebody that we’ve been able to go to throughout the year,” he said. “His role has kind of been a merry-go-round type thing. He might be in right field. He might be out of the pen. He might have to start. But I’ve watched him progress and get better.
“The big one, the confidence there late, was Tucker Bryan. He’s pitched some, but in the back of my mind, and this is where I give my assistant coach Caleb Shealy a lot of props, sitting there after we made the change, he looked at me and said, ‘Hey, Coach, that’s three batters in a row he’s been 3-2. You need to think about the potential of a passed ball, potentially hitting someone.’ So, right then, I said, ‘Yeah, we need to go to a strike-thrower.’ Tucker Bryan came in and did just that.”
The playoff picture is starting to take shape, with the Class AAAA playoff opener scheduled for May 5. The T-Breds are in seventh in the region standings, but by no means are they out of the hunt. The size and strength of Region 4-AAAA are such that Asbill feels South Aiken is “sitting pretty” in terms of getting an at-large spot. There’s still a lot of baseball left, and the T-Breds still have a couple more chances to draw a more favorable spot in the bracket.
“I tell you, I’m starting to see it,” Asbill said. “The confidence, it’s not so much, ‘Rah rah.’ It’s more of just, ‘All right, we can handle this.’ They’ve been hungry for a long time, and they’ve dealt with adversity throughout this year. I think how they’ve handled it is correlating into a little bit of success late for us.”
