Jackets administer beatdown in Brunswick
May 14—There is never a good time to play longtime NC high school baseball bully Rose, but if Lee County has to try it, this is as good a time as any.
The Yellow Jackets advanced to the third round of the NCHSAA 3A state playoffs and a date with the top-ranked Rampants by overcoming two long bus rides and blowing out South Brunswick 14-2 on Friday and Saturday in Southport.
Lee led 5-0 in the second inning Friday when the game was postponed due to bad weather, and the teams had to pick up where they left off the next day. This meant another 134-mile bus ride, but it didn't faze the Jackets, who ended up with a mercy-rule victory in just five total innings of work.
The Yellow Jackets improved to 20-9 on the season, winning their sixth game in a row. The 20 victories in a single season is the most for a Lee County team in at least 17 years. Hall of Fame coach Charlie Spivey directed his final Jackets team to a 19-win campaign eight years ago.
Lee had every reason to expect that their second-round game would be tough. Although South Brunswick came in with a record of just 12-11, the Cougars play in the ridiculously tough Mideastern 3A/4A, a league that included traditional high school powerhouses New Hanover, Hoggard, and Topsail. The seventh-place team in the league this season, Laney, will play at Pinecrest in the third round of the 4A playoffs tonight. South Brunswick crushed Triton 15-0 in the first round last week.
But the Jackets play a tough schedule too, and they sent a message right out of the gate. BJ Brown drew a one-out walk and Walker McDuffie singled to send Brown chugging into third. Andrew Stanfield got him in on a sacrifice fly, and then Blake Carlyle followed with a single to score McDuffie.
The Jackets stung again in the second, loading the bases on back-to-back singles by Joshua Hall and Will Rannells, followed by a walk to Austin Ragan. Luke Sheets got a run in on a sacrifice fly, Brown singled to make it 5-0, and Ragan scored on a McDuffie groundout.
South had two on and two out in the second when the game was postponed. The good news for Lee County is that pitcher Blane McDonald hadn't thrown many pitches and was able to go again the next day and finish the job. A junior who had pitched just 10.1 varsity innings coming into this season, he went the distance on just 62 pitches while allowing just two runs, both in the fourth, at a time when his team already led 11-0. Of those 20 Jacket wins, McDonald owns six of them.
When the teams finished up on Saturday, Lee scored one in the third and five in the top of the fourth. After South finally did push two runs across in its half of the fourth, Lee got three more and then McDonald tossed a scoreless bottom of the fifth to end it.
The Jackets had a tremendous effort from the second half of its lineup, as Carlyle and Rannells had two hits each and Hall and Landon Miles had three hits apiece, all of them from the 5 hole or lower. Brown had a perfect day at the plate, 2-for-2 with two walks, three runs scored and an RBI. Stanfield, who hit cleanup, had just one hit but four RBI, thanks to a pair of sacrifice flies. Carlyle, Miles and Rannells all drove in two runs and McDuffie and Hall scored two each.
Lee will travel to Rose (23-2), last year's state runner-up after taking the title in 2021, tonight at 7 p.m. The teams had two common foes this season in Corinth Holders and South Brunswick, and the Jackets and Rampants won those games. The good news for Lee is that ace Walker McDuffie has not pitched in a week and should be ready for Rose. The winner will face either Orange or Terry Sanford on Friday, and if both Lee and Orange were to win, the game would be here.
