Enterprise vs. Perry Central (Baseball)

The Yellow Jackets traveled to Perry Central Thursday night to start the third-round of the MHSAA playoffs.

Enterprise has won their first four games of the playoffs, with two of them coming over a highly-regarded Enterprise-Clarke team last week.

The Yellow Jackets have pitched extremely well through their playoff run, and that’s certainly been a key to their success past the regular season.

It’s often said that good pitching beats good hitting, and while that’s argumentative, the Yellow Jackets have proven more times than not this season when they’re throwing the ball into the strike zone, they’re going to be really tough to beat.

At the plate, Enterprise is good enough. They’re not going to overwhelm you with numbers, but as Yellow Jacket head coach Cass Brister said earlier this week, they find ways to get it done, and when you’re into the playoffs that’s what matters.

In a best-of-three format, you’re able to take advantage of being deep on the mound, and the Yellow Jackets are certainly that. They’ve shown to be resilient throughout the season as well, and they battle back when things get tough, a key to being able to have success in the playoffs.

Perry Central pitches it well, too, but the Bulldogs don’t appear to have the depth on the mound that the Yellow Jackets do. When two teams that are evenly matched like this play, it usually goes three games.

Give me the team with the better pitching depth.

Prediction: Enterprise in three games.

Lawrence County vs. Newton County (Softball)

Lawrence County wrapped their series against Vancleave on Tuesday night in the first game, with a 3-1 walk-off winner.

The Cougars have only dropped one game this season, and it was against Northeast Jones in game two of their playoff series, and Lawrence County bounced right back immediately afterwards and won game three.

That loss was a little bit of a test for the Cougars, and over the next three games they’ve shown that they were able to handle the first loss of the year and bounce back with a vengeance.

Newton County is a solid softball team and program, however, and they come into the South State championship series on Saturday with a 22-6 mark on the year and a perfect 8-0 mark in their district.

Newton County is led by Shelby Anderson in the circle, who’s pitched 76.1 innings for them this season. She has a 2.2 ERA and has struck out 44 hitters on the season.

They also hit the ball considerably well, coming into the series with a .410 batting average and 43 extra-base hits on the season.

Lawrence County was able to respond after their only loss this season in a drubbing of Northeast Jones, and at this point of the season having only one loss on the year says a lot.

Prediction: Lawrence County in three games.