Whitewater baseball knocked out in game 3 of AAAA semifinals

The Whitewater Wildcats certainly had one of the longer road trips in the AAAA baseball playoffs when they traveled to Evans, Ga. to take on the Greenbrier Wolf Pack on Monday.

They extended their trip by splitting the first two games with Greenbrier and forcing a third and deciding game on Tuesday. The Wolf Pack sent the Wildcats home on Tuesday nght and gave them plenty of time to think about how close they came to reaching the finals for a second straight year.

Greenbrier won the first game on Monday 6-4. The Wolf Pack started with a 2-0 lead after the first inning but Alex Liquori and starting pitcher Daniel Amos both hit home runs to take a 3-2 lead. Greenbrier got the lead back 4-3 in the next inning and added two more runs in the bottom of the fourth inning to lead 6-3. The Wildcats got one more run in the top of the fifth inning but for the first time since May 9, there was no comeback for the ‘Comeback Cats’ this time.

Greenbrier jumped ahead again in the second game, leading 1-0 after two innings and 2-0 after three innings. Whitewater answered with a huge inning that included a two run blast from Taylor Turner. It was 6-2 Whitewater after four innings and 7-2 in the sixth after another Liquori home run. Liquori was 5 for 7 in the doubleheader. Greenbrier added three runs late and certainly made things interesting in the final inning, but Whitewater held on and won game 2 8-5.

Game three started with a three run home run from John Mark Rhodes in the top of the first inning, but Greenbrier (30-3) got four runs in the first, another two in the second and led 9-5 in the fourth inning. They added two more runs in the bottom of the fourth and four runs in the fifth to win 15-5 and to advance to Saturday’s final against Loganville.

Whitewater finished with a record of 26-9. They will graduate a lot of players this Friday, many of whom have reached the semifinals or finals in their high school careers, but fans, coaches and administrators still believe the best is yet to come for the program.