Aynor baseball falls to Dillon in Lower State opener

Gregg Dozier had already been in two close baseball games with Aynor this year.

He was hoping to avoid a third.

The Dillon head coach got his wish, as the Wildcats defeated Aynor 9-3 in the opening round of the Class AA Lower State tournament on Saturday. And while some late-inning drama and ensuing Wildcats offense played a role in the Blue Jackets’ loss, it was some early production that set the tone. Dillon scored as many runs in the first two innings as it did in the previous two games combined.

“The last time here, we waited until the seventh inning to get a hit. This same kid has a no-hitter going,” Dozier said, referring to Aynor pitcher Nick Fowler and his one-hitter against Dillon in April. “That’s what we’ve been talking about coming into this – we’ve got to jump on that whole crowd early and make them play from behind.

“That was our big focus coming in was to put runs on the board early and make them do stuff they’re not [used to].”

The strategy worked just two batters into the game. After Omar McCollum doubled to lead off, John Mitchell Carter laid down a sacrifice bunt. An attempt to throw McCollum out at third sailed into the fence, allowing him to score.

Mitchell then scored on the Patrick Herring’s RBI single three pitches later, and Herring came around on a groundout two batters after that. The Wildcats added another in the second with a McCollum RBI.

Aynor got its first run on Caleb Noble’s RBI single in the third and then got a boost from Fowler’s two-run home run in the fourth to cut the Dillon lead to 4-3.

And that’s when things got interesting. Following a hectic sequence in the top of the fifth in which Aynor threw out a runner at home, Dozier came out to argue the call but wasn’t awarded time and the Blue Jackets then caught a Wildcat going to third while players and coaches from both teams were out of the dugout, it appeared Aynor had a window to close the gap completely.

Instead, Dillon pitcher Austin Moody had two strikeouts in the bottom half of the inning and teammate Gunnar Grossetti hit a two-run homer in the sixth to extend the lead out again.

“That would have been a great time to capitalize, if we could have come out there and put a few [runs] out there when the momentum’s going our way,” Aynor coach Chad Sarvis said. “They did a good job of settling in and slowing it down.”

Said Dozier: “A little bit of controversy goes a long way with that crowd. They thrive off of stuff like that. They found a way to use it productively and take the momentum away from them when that happened.”

Another two-run home run in the top of the seventh from South Carolina commitment Duncan Callahan capped the scoring and was an exclamation point for a Dillon team that will play Bishop England-Waccamaw winner on Tuesday for the right to host the Lower State championship series.

The loss drops the Blue Jackets into elimination rounds of the Lower State bracket. They’ll face the loser of Monday’s Bishop England-Waccamaw game – delayed two days because of rains associated with Tropical Storm Ana – on Tuesday.

After having not made it to the Lower State tournament since 2006, however, the Blue Jackets aren’t ready to call it quits just yet.

“You’ve got to worry about yourself,” Sarvis said. “You don’t look at it as an elimination game. You play well and leave it between the lines. If you do that, good things are going to happen.”

This story was originally published May 9, 2015 at 9:52 PM with the headline "Aynor baseball falls to Dillon in Lower State opener."