Houston County baseball headed to quarterfinals for seventh straight season after sweep of Brunswick

WARNER ROBINS — The Houston County Bears have advanced to the quarterfinals for the seventh year in a row after taking down the Brunswick Pirates in a doubleheader sweep on Tuesday.

HoCo’s swagger dipped in the middle innings of Game 1’s 7-3 final, but they opened up Game 2 for a 12-2 victory highlighted by Isaiah Galason’s two-run home run.

Three observations:

Playing with some of that HoCo swagger

Bears coach Matt Hopkins has talked several times about wanting his team to play with some swagger, and they sure did to start Game 1 against Brunswick.

Will Allen, who has been hesitant to put the ball in the strike zone at times, attacked batters and got them down in the count early in their at-bats.

He forced the Pirates to come out swinging, and when they made contact the ball zipped around the infield as the defense locked them down.

The energy and swagger oozed off of the Bears, and it looked like they might glide through round two.

But, in the third inning, Brunswick turned the momentum around.

With two runners on and two outs the Pirates’ Dawson Parke got a double to drop just inside the right foul line and it rolled into the right field corner before Vick Gann could get to it and rocket it to the infield. Before that, two runners got home to take a 2-1 over the Bears.

That started the middle inning struggles, and not a surprise for Hopkins considering Brunswick’s scrappy nature.

“That’s a really good baseball team that we just played. The [pitcher] we played Game 1 had only given up 12 runs all season and he was going for their strikeout record, very good arm,” Hopkins said. “Going into the fifth I think it was when we scored a few to open it up. It was three to three, I looked at our guys and just pretty much told ‘em, ‘The reason we play hard games is so that these moments aren’t too big.’”

It was the middle of the lineup that picked up the slack in the fifth inning.

HoCo loaded the bases with no outs and an opportunity to do a lot of damage, and Ethan Buffone and Ethan Kenney’s fly outs scored a run each to push the Bears’ lead to 5-3.

Tyson Ganas snuck a RBI single past a diving shortstop to bring in another, and just like that HoCo doubled up the Pirates with six outs to go.

“Sure enough, that inning, we decided to open it up a little bit and then we kind of rolled from there,” Hopkins said. “It just took that mental reset and just trying to get locked back in.”

Responding to the challenge

Getting the Bears to lock in for Game 2’s has notoriously been a hit or miss effort. As has been mentioned ad nauseam, that type of lackadaisical play will cost you in the later rounds.

So, Hopkins issued his team a challenge early in Game 2, saying that Brunswick is playing for their season and they won’t just give up.

HoCo seemed to respond to that as they scored six of their 12 runs in the final three innings to push the game into blowout territory.

Although the seventh seemed more like a formality than anything, the Bears still put an exclamation point on their round two sweep with a two-run home run from Galason.

“They had [a senior] starting Game 2, and seniors are gonna put their heart on the line,” Hopkins said. “I told ‘em, I said, this guy’s gonna come out here and battle you with everything he’s got. So the big thing is if we can come out and put some runs on him and make him question that, you can really put him into place. I thought we did a good job of continuing to put pressure offensively in Game 2 and really open that game up.”

The Pirates didn’t want Galason anywhere near the baseball

Galason built a reputation for himself as a big RBI threat in HoCo’s first out of town tournament in Hoover, Alabama. He was highlighted as a top performer for his efforts, and he didn’t slow down when he came back to Houston County.

Brunswick was clearly aware of that, and they didn’t want to put anything near the zone for him in Game 1. He was walked three times in the opener, and once more in the nightcap as he tried to find ways to contribute outside of putting ball to bat.

Despite the Pirates trying to limit the sophomore, he still scored five runs across both games to help the Bears to victory.

“He’s dangerous right there in the three. You put up enough track record people are gonna start to respect you,” Hopkins said. “I think that’s exactly what you saw. They were willing to pitch around him and hope he could get himself out, and make the guys behind him make him pay…We’ve been kind of spotty, [our] four five and six found ways to manufacture runs through [sacrifice] flies for base hits. That’s what it’s going to take to start getting more pitchers for Isaiah.”

UP NEXT

HoCo will travel to Pope High School on Wednesday, May 7 at 4:30 p.m. for a doubleheader.