By the time Winona Christian takes the field against Manchester Academy, it will have been 10 days since the Stars played a baseball game.
But that doesn’t seem to concern WCS head coach Shannon Self as the Stars begin defense of their MAIS Class 2A state championship.
“We have gone 10 days since we played,” Self said. “But we did intra-squad on Thursday and Friday and all of our pitchers threw. We got a lot out of that. A lot of teams have had to do that and that’s just part of it. Our pitching is where it needs to be. We worked on a lot of situations.”
The Stars open up the Class 2A playoffs on Tuesday as they were scheduled to take on Manchester, the team that shut them out in the last week of the regular season.
“We didn’t hit the ball that game,” Self said. “We pitched a lot of different kids. We got to see their No. 1 pitcher as well. I don’t look at the wins or losses, I look to see what we needed to get better. They showed us some things we needed to do to get better and we came back and worked on those things.”
The Stars were to send Meridian Community College signee Austin Huggins to the mound in Game 1 on Tuesday at Yazoo City while Blake Marlow is set to start in Game 2 on Thursday at 4 p.m. at Winona. The if-needed game would start immediately after Game 3 on Thursday.
"I feel good about it any time I send Austin to the mound,” Self said. “He has given us a chance to win every time he has thrown for us the last three years. I think the big thing for us is at the plate. They have a left-handed kid and we couldn’t simulate that. We have to find some hits. We hit a lot of balls right at them the first time we played. They are a good program and a good team. Right now, everybody in the playoffs is good. You don’t get here without being pretty good.”
