Published: May 10, 2008 12:57 am            

Heading south

Cats sweep Hartselle, head back to 5A title series

Bryan Bowen’s worries are over — at least for this week.

The Cullman High baseball coach can now sit back and enjoy his 35th birthday, which just happens to be today.

Playing rival Hartselle High in the Class 5A semifinals Friday night, Cullman players gave their coach the present he had been asking for all week: A two-game sweep over the Tigers in front of a capacity crowd.

“This is big. It’s what playoff baseball is all about,” said Bowen after his team beat Hartselle 5-1 and 8-3 to secure a spot in next week’s state finals. “To make it to the state finals six times in seven years, that’s tough to do.”

Heading into the series, Bowen figured that Hartselle coach William Booth would throw his two aces — Chad Girodo and J.C. Bates — in the first two games of the best-of-three series. So the Bearcats coach knew his staff would have to match the Tigers’ aces pitch for pitch.

Matt Drake and Drew Bryson did exactly that.

Drake stiffled Hartselle’s hitters in the first game, allowing six hits while striking out five in the complete game win.

Bryson followed with a six-hit, 10-strikeout performance in game two, striking out the side in the bottom of the seventh to clinch a spot in Montgomery.

“Both of those guys pitched great,” Bowen said. “You can’t say enough about what they did out there.”

Cullman grabbed the momentum early in the first game, with Chaise Mathis hitting a three-run homer in the bottom of the first.

The Bearcats extended their lead to four in the bottom of the fourth when Jacob Smith pushed Kyle Johnson across the plate with an RBI single.

Smith struck again in the sixth inning, hitting a solo homer over the center field fence to extend the lead to 5-1.

Cullman struck first again in game two, with Smith pushing Johnson across the plate in the top of the fourth inning.

The Bearcats rallied again in the top of the fourth. Josh Bell led off the inning with a single, and eventually reached second on a passed ball. After Austin Golden moved Bell to third with a single, another passed ball allowed the Cullman senior to score.

Chase Mathis followed with a hard grounder Hartselle’s second baseman couldn’t field, which allowed Golden to score. After Mathis scored on the third passed ball of the inning, Bowen rolled the dice to extend the lead to 5-0.

When Hartselle’s catcher bobbled the ball, Smith got himself caught in a run-down in between second and first base. While Smith was trying to avoid the tag, Ethan Hale scored from third base.

“I just rolled the dice,” Bowen said. “I had already made myself look like an idiot in game one when we had a double play turned on us on a squeeze play. Sometimes that stuff works, and sometimes it doesn’t. It just happened to work that time.”

The Bearcats added one more run in the fifth when Smith scored on an RBI single by Jeremy Peek.

Hartselle added three runs in the bottom of the sixth, but Cullman countered with a two-run homer by Johnson in the top of the seventh.

“That was really big,” Bowen said. “They scored three, and we came right back and scored in the next inning. That was huge.”

        

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