East Carter, Naylor advance in OFC Tournament

It was a gorgeous afternoon for baseball as four teams started postseason play in the annual Ozark Foothills Conference Baseball Tournament at Three Rivers College.

The East Carter Redbirds took down Clearwater 4-3 in the tourney opener while Naylor beat Neelyville 13-5 in the second game of the day.

The Redbirds will take on Greenville at noon today while Naylor will take on top-seeded Twin Rivers at 2 p.m.

The seeding held true during the first day of the tourney as East Carter and Naylor were the better seed in their respective matchups but now they run into the top two teams in the conference.

Despite a mercy-rule win over the Clearwater earlier this season, East Carter had a little more trouble with the Tigers this time around even trailed 2-1 heading to the bottom of the third.

“I told them it’s baseball,” head coach Ethan Boyer said to his team. “If you’ve been around this game long enough, you know anything can happen. It doesn’t who you’re playing, it doesn’t matter who’s on the other side, you’ve got to take care of business on your side and I was just telling them we’ve got to keep focusing on us and doing things right even though at times we didn’t execute when we needed to.”

The Redbirds responded with two more runs in the bottom of the third to take the lead and then a triple from Brendan Reynolds in the bottom of the fifth would later provide the game-winning run for East Carter as Clearwater added one more in the seventh to make the game interesting.

“Clearwater, they were ready to play,” Boyer said. “Credit to them and Coach Harris, he had them ready and they gave us everything we wanted today.”

The Redbirds now look to Greenville, a team they fell to 12-7 back on Aug. 31.

Boyer said the script will be flipped for the semifinals.

“I think today’s a good lesson,” he said. “I came in knowing Clearwater had every chance to beat us but I don’t think they did. Tomorrow you come in and you give Greenville your best shot at it. You try to execute and you never know what could happen. No one has given us a chance and I think that’s a good spot to be in. We’ll come in and we’ll try to surprise them a little bit.”

East Carter and Greenville are scheduled for a noon start at Three Rivers.

__Naylor takes down Neelyville__

It was dominance in all but one inning from the Naylor Eagles on Monday as they cruised by Neelyville 13-5 in the second quarterfinal of the day to put a wrap on the first two games of this year’s Ozark Foothills Conference Tournament.

Naylor jumped out to a 1-0 lead in the first and never looked back as they plated runs in five of the six innings they came to the plate.

Eagles coach Logan Foster said pitching is key in postseason play and despite using a few more than he wanted, they got the job done.

“It was just important for us to come and throw strikes, compete in the field and put the ball in play,” he said. “We’ve struck out a bunch this year. Today we didn’t strike out too much and that’s a big deal for us.”

The Eagles had seven hits in the game but were aided by four Neelyville errors .

“That’s what it’s all about,” he said. “Putting the ball in play. They’re high school kids. Even good ones, they make mistakes. Mine make mistakes, they all make mistakes but when you put the ball in play, it puts pressure on them. When you apply pressure, people make mistakes. That’s happened to us.”

Naylor ran into some trouble in the fifth inning when the Tigers plated five to cut the deficit to 7-5 but the Eagles bounced back with five of their own in the bottom of the frame.

Foster said he knows they’re going to have to bring their best when they take on top-seeded Twin Rivers today at 2 p.m.

“We’re going to have to make plays defensively,” he said. “We need to throw strikes but they’re going to hit the ball so we’re going to have to make plays defensively. Last time we played them they had a kid hit a home run so keep them in the park. We have to make defensively and then when we get people on, we have to move them around. Twin Rivers is very good.”