CBA-Rosewood baseball

By Rudy Coggins
Published in Sports on March 24, 2011 1:47 PM

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Charles B. Aycock avoided the letdown.

Rosewood seeks to stay positive.

Less than 24 hours after triumphing in come-from-behind fashion over a county arch nemesis, the Golden Falcons quickly grounded the Eagles on a blustery, sunny Wednesday afternoon.

Jonathan Taylor clubbed a second-inning home run and Derek Limbaugh logged another consistent mound performance in a 21-2, mercy rule-shortened affair on the Rosewood High School diamond. Aycock (9-2 overall) swept the regular-season series.

"After a big win at Eastern Wayne last night, my thoughts were (for us) to come out mentally ready to play," said Golden Falcons head coach Charles Davis. "We did. We squared some balls up in the first inning, got off to a good start. The kids took it upon themselves to play the game hard."

The Eagles (3-7) suffered their fourth consecutive loss of the season. Six of their setbacks have occurred against teams from the Eastern Carolina 3-A and Big East 3-A conferences.

"My idea (behind the schedule) is if we play high-quality teams, eventually we'll learn to play high-quality baseball," said third-year Rosewood head coach Jason King. "We knew going into it we were going to take some lumps here and there. We feel like when we play these types of teams, we're going to see as good -- if not better -- arms and bats than we'll see in conference.

"That will prepare us and that's our goal. We just have to stay positive."

Eight of nine Golden Falcon starters recorded at least one hit on the afternoon. Taylor finished 3-of-5 with four RBI, while Collin DuBose doubled and tripled in a 3-for-5, three-RBI performance.

Bryant Stafford (three RBI) and Jeff Davis (two RBI) supplied two hits apiece.

Aycock sent a combined 23 batters to the plate in the first two innings. Rosewood right-hander Cody Harris permitted four first-inning runs on six hits, and failed to record an out in the second inning before reliever Garrett Burns took the mound.

Rosewood used four pitchers in the game.

"They came out swinging and hit the ball well," said King. "We left some balls up in the zone, had some trouble finding the strike zone at times. When you walk guys, make errors, get guys on base and then they hit, it makes things much worse."

Limbaugh faced two batters over the minimum for three innings and lost his shutout bid in the fourth. The right-hander struck out three, walked one and yielded a two-RBI single to Burns.

It was Limbaugh's third start in the last seven days, and second against Rosewood.

"Derek, the more he throws, the sharper he is and his arm never bothers him," said Davis. "I wanted to give him at least four innings today and he threw the ball well."