Houston County advances to quarterfinals with revenge sweep of Newnan

WARNER ROBINS — The last time Houston County and Newnan played, the Cougars knocked what might’ve been the best team in the state of Georgia off their pedestal for a state championship ring.

On Friday the Bears repaid the favor with a sweep behind 3-2 and 11-1 wins.

Freshman Kaiden Harvey delivered the first of hopefully many big playoff moments in his career with a Game 1 walk-off double, winning a tightly contested game that gave the Bears the momentum to win the series.

As a team HoCo was 6-for-24 (.250) and struck out eight times in the first game. Between a pitcher head coach Matt Hopkins thought was a tricky matchup and the nerves of a championship rematch, offense was hard to come by.

Peyton Nauss recorded the first hit for either team in the bottom of the third with a hard-hit ground ball through the 5-6 gap. Nauss has been one of the biggest risers for the Bears in the last year.

He was 4-for-6 at the plate, scored three runs and belted two doubles in the series against Newnan. Recently the bottom of the lineup has driven the team offense more consistently, and Nauss is a big contributor for that.

“He’s been really big lately,” Hopkins said. “He had some at-bats in the middle of the year that kind of got away from him, but I thought lately he’s been really locked in to the situation where our bottom of our lineup the last two weeks has been what’s started us going.”

“I think our top is trying to do too much and then our bottom is trying to compete and we’re starting to adjust and form the team that we’re wanting to be, which is a great place to be right now going forward,” Hopkins continued.

Nauss scored the first run on a passed ball and an error at left field allowed pinch runner Braylen Taleb to add another to the tally. Those were HoCo’s last runs until Harvey’s walk-off.

Coming up to the plate Harvey was 0-for-2 in the game with a strikeout, sacrifice bunt and a pop out. The bullpen was active preparing for extra innings with two outs on the board.

The Cougars switched up the pitchers, too, when Harvey came up. He took the first strike looking but the next one he sent towering into the outfield.

The ball drifted to the right and found the gap between the left and center fielders, sending Taleb racing around third base and home to win the game.

The dugout went into pandemonium as teammates celebrated with Harvey in the middle of the diamond.

It seemed like a breakthrough for the young third baseman. Playing leadoff on varsity is a difficult task especially as a freshman, but maybe this moment is what he needs to unleash his confidence.

“A freshman leading off is a hard thing. Leadoff’s the hardest spot on the field, especially when you get out there in the first at-bat, you don’t know what this guy is, you don’t know the zone, and you’re helping people figure it out and piece it together,” Hopkins said. “It’s a lot of times where you’re going to want to play timid, but it’s one of those situations where, he gets that really big hit and we just keep speaking confidence into him. He’s going to continue to grow and I can’t wait to see what he becomes this year and in the future.”

The confidence seemed to be contagious in Game 2, a five-inning affair where the Bears put up crooked numbers in four innings and scored in all five.

Harvey looked a lot more comfortable, too, and finished 1-for-3 with two runs scored and a walk drawn.

HoCo was 11-for-27 (.407) and they felt in control the entire game.

Nauss’ two doubles came in Game 2, and Isaiah Galason and Harvey each added one. Noah Odom’s two-strike triple sailed into the right field fence to score two.

Hopkins thinks winning Game 1 was certainly a contributing factor to the Game 2 performance, but running the starter off in two innings also helped.

“Game 1 was a tall kid coming downhill with a really weird angle to hit on, and he mixed two pitches and kept us off balance,” Hopkins said. “Then the Game 2 guy, I thought, didn’t have quite the velocity to get us off of his off speed stuff, so we were able to get a little bit more aggressive at the plate, find more barrels.”

“But definitely, you win Game 1, you know that you got Game 2, and if you lose Game 2 you still got life,” Hopkins continued. “So it’s being able to play free and not [feeling] that pressure.”

UP NEXT

HoCo may have played their final series at The Garden, and will travel to Woodward Academy next week for the quarterfinals.