Published: October 09, 2008 11:47 am      

Roff eyes first fall baseball title

But Tigers to tangle with underdog Tupelo at Class B Sate Tournament

Oklahoma City — If form holds, history figures to have a tough time repeating itself at this week’s Class B state baseball tournament. Not that it won’t have its chances, though.

In Thursday’s opening round, defending Class B fall champion Tupelo will face old rival Roff (at 5 p.m. at Dolese Park in Oklahoma City) in a rematch of last year’s title game, won by Tupelo, 6-0. This year, the 2007 champs enter the tournament with 20 losses and will be the longest shot in either class to advance past a Roff squad that begins the week 34-2 and, to this point at least, is firmly established as Oklahoma’s best team this fall.

Roff, which has never won a fall baseball championship, last entered the fall state tournament as a No. 1 seed back in 2005. The Tigers — then in Class A — lost just one of 31 games before heading off to Oklahoma City but didn’t get past the first round, dropping a wind-blown 3-2 decision to Dale, which came out of the loser’s bracket to win the championship.

And this spring, Roff again advanced to the Class B title game before being manhandled, 15-5, by a red-hot Red Oak squad that enters this year’s state tournament ranked No. 2 and figures to be the biggest roadblock between the Tigers and their school’s first-ever fall title.

History, good or bad, doesn’t seem to mean much, however, to Roff coach Ead Simon, who is in the enviable position of having clearly the most talented team in Class B (or Class A for that matter) this fall. He said he and his players are entering the week with just one goal — to do what they’ve been doing all season.

“I don’t know that it’s an advantage or a disadvantage,” Simon said of his No. 1 seed in the eight-team field. “I don’t think it really matters with this group.

“Honestly, the last couple of years I don’t think we necessarily had the best club, but I feel like this year we may be the most talented team there, and that’s good I guess,” he said. “If I was going to take a team up there, I’d want to take the bunch I’m taking up there. If we go up there and play well and do the best we can, as a coach I’ll be able to live with it, but if we don’t go up there and win, there will be a sense of disappointment, because that’s what the expectations are. That’s a good thing, and I don’t mind at all.”

Now back to history.

Last fall, Simon took a team with just two senior starters and a talented core of sophomores to Oklahoma City, and the Tigers — after beating Red Oak in the semifinals on a walkoff home run by Logan Reed — advanced to Roff’s first-ever fall championship contest before being shut out by Tupelo ace Randy McCurry in a game in which McCurry’s younger brother, Brendan, also homered. Reed moved to Stonewall last winter and played for the Longhorns in the spring and again this fall, and Thursday, Brendan McCurry will be in the other dugout after moving to Roff this summer.

The addition of the younger McCurry to a Roff junior class that also included Blake Logan, Dayne Parker and Aaron Cornell made the Tigers instant favorites in Class B when the season began. To this point, they’ve lived up to the hype, and Simon said his team’s state tournament experience should be a solid complement to Roff’s obvious talent.

“Our main guys are a little more seasoned, and I hope the more we go up there and get in that atmosphere, we get better at handling it,” he said. “We’ve had a lot of kids who have grown up and I think we’ll handle the stage a little bit better.

“We played pretty well last fall,” he added. “In the spring, I didn’t think we played well in any round, even though we made it to the championship game. I would just like to go up there and play well and see how things fall.”

While Simon and the Tigers won’t be happy unless they leave Oklahoma City Saturday with a championship, Tupelo coach Clay Weller and his young club are just happy to be there at all.

Weller — who was in Simon’s position as the coach of the Class B favorite in the spring and fall of 2007 (when his Tigers won back-to-back titles) and again this spring (when Tupelo was upset by Red Oak in the semifinals) — lost All-Staters Randy McCurry and Cameron Mann and the rest of a talented senior class to graduation, then saw Brendan McCurry move to Roff over the summer.

Tupelo opened this season with just one senior (Jeremy Stein) and two other starters (junior Nathan Hogue and sophomore Jake Sanders) off the team that went to the 2007 fall state tournament, and Weller integrated a group of talented but inexperienced freshmen and sophomores with his returning starters this fall. Despite finishing 14-20, the Tigers won a 22nd straight district title and, surprisingly, earned the school’s 10th straight state tournament berth as the consolation champ out of Red Oak’s regional last week.

“Obviously we’re a huge underdog compared to the past few years,” said Weller, whose teams lost just two games in each season from the spring of 2007 to the spring of 2008 and, before this fall, hadn’t lost more than six games in any season since the spring of 2005. “The main thing is that we just have to worry about ourselves and give ourselves a chance to stay in the ball game.

“I’ve said all year I think Roff is the most talented team in Class B by far this fall,” he added. “Hopefully we’ll just go play well.”

Logan, who was unbeaten in nine decisions this spring before giving up 10 runs in less than three innings and taking the loss to Red Oak in the championship game while pitching on two days’ rest for the first time, is 7-0 this fall and the leader of the state’s deepest pitching staff. Simon said his ace righthander will start Saturday if the Tigers make it to the championship game, with Parker and Cornell penciled in to start Thursday and Friday. McCurry, 6-0 as a starter this fall, will be used as a closer.

“Brendan bounces back better than anybody we have, so we can use him every day if we need to,” Simon said. “Right now, we’re looking at starting Dayne, Aaron and Blake. I just like the way Brendan has been closing out games.

“We like having Dayne at shortstop, so rather than use him as a closer, we’re going to use him as a starter,” he added. “That puts our defense where we want it. Dayne might have more starts (at the state tournament) than anybody we’ve got, and I think it’s just our best match-up right now.”

While Simon has the luxury of planning ahead and setting his pitching staff for all three days with expectation of hanging around until Saturday, Weller — who had the state’s best small-school pitching staff the past two years — will choose among three players — Sanders, Hogue or Trevor Walkup — to start Thursday’s game who have never pitched an inning in a state tournament.

“I really don’t know who will start,” he said. “Those three have been our most consistent guys the latter part of the year. Nathan threw the ball as well as anybody the last three weeks of the season, but Jake and Trevor have both been pretty solid all year. They’re going to have to throw strikes and hope the defense works behind them. Whoever we put out there, we’ll have to play defense, because Roff has a potent lineup.”

While the top six in Roff’s batting order — Cornell, senior Kord Kile, Parker, McCurry, Logan and senior catcher Taylor Whitis — have been among the state’s most consistent hitters all season, Weller spent most of this fall looking for help for the top four in his lineup — Sanders, Stein and freshmen Brandon Maggia and Matt Benedict. The bottom of the Tupelo order finally started to produce in the playoffs, helping the Tigers score 25 runs in victories over Caney (11-8) and Whitesboro (14-2) at the regional tournament.

“The biggest key for us in the regional was that we got production out of the 6-7-8-9 holes in the lineup,” Weller noted. “Hopefully we can carry that over into Thursday. We probably won’t pound 15 hits against Roff, but we want to limit our strikeouts and make them get us out.”

Stein, the last remaining starter of Tupelo’s 2007 spring squad that was the most talented in team history, has been one of Oklahoma’s toughest outs all season. The speedy senior center fielder enters the state tournament hitting .542 with six home runs, and he has stolen 29 bases in 29 attempts this fall.

“It’s been tough for Jeremy, because he’s been on teams that have just gone out and dominated people the past three years,” Weller explained. “It’s been an adjustment for him to not have the team success we’ve had in years past, so I’m proud of the way he’s stepped up. He wanted to be here at Tupelo and be a leader for these guys, and he’s done his job.”

And, despite the 20 losses and the rollercoaster ride his team has been on for much of the season, Weller said the experience has been a good one for himself and his players.

“As a coach, any athletic event is about adjumtments” Weller said. “We had to adjust this year because our talent level has dropped off so much. We knew with our schedule, wins might be few and far between, so winning 14 games was big for us.

“These kids appreciated it when they got a victory,” he added. It’s kind of refreshing that a regular-season game meant so much to them, and hopefully we can build on our success this fall and carry it over to the spring.”

Simon, meanwhile, said that no matter how far Tupelo’s talent level has dropped this fall, Thursday’s game is still Roff-Tupelo, and he expects his club to remember the lessons taught by Red Oak to both sets of Tigers this spring.

“We’ve had experience up there, and I would hope we can go through a tournament without overlooking anybody,” Simon said. “I think when Tupelo got beat last spring we breathed a sigh of relief, and that might have gotten us beat. Everybody thought Tupelo was the team to beat, but Red Oak got hot. I would be neat to go up there and get hot, and that’s what we’re shooting for.”



STATE SCHEDULES

FALL BASEBALL

CLASS A STATE

Thursday (At Yukon)

Game 1: Wright City vs. Dale, Noon

Game 2: Oktaha vs. Rock Creek, 2:30

Game 3: FC-Broxton vs. Soper, 5 p.m.

Game 4: Verden vs. Tushka, 7:30

Friday (At Dolese Park)

Game 1 winner vs. Game 3 winner, 5 p.m.

Game 2 winner vs. Game 4 winner, 7:30

Saturday (At Dolese Park)

Championship, 2:30



CLASS B STATE

Thursday (Dolese)

Game 1: New Lima vs. Red Oak, Noon

Game 2: Dover vs. Arnett, 2:30

Game 3: ROFF vs. TUPELO, 5 p.m.

Game 4: Granite vs. Vici, 7:30

Friday (Dolese)

Game 2 winner vs. Game 3 winner, Noon

Game 1 winner vs. Game 4 winner, 2:30

Saturday (Dolese)

Championship, Noon