CBA-Conley Baseball

By Cam Ellis
Published in Sports on April 26, 2015 1:44 PM

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PIKEVILLE- This was the kind of moment that Charlie Robertson had played out in his head 100 times.

Bottom of the seventh, tied at four. Runners on the corners, a 3-1 count.

In the backyard as a kid, he would have hit a towering homerun to walkoff with the win. In reality, grounding into a game-winning fielders choice would have to do.

Robertson drove in the winning run on Friday night, capping off an exciting comeback as Charles B. Aycock defeated conference 3-A/4-A foe D.H. Conley, 5-4.

"My mind was saying 'I got this,'" he said. "Because you've got to have a positive attitude. You block everything else out. You block everyone out. It's just you and [Conley pitcher Bryant Packard].

I was better than him. I was going to be better than him."

On the mound, the Golden Falcons got rode their top two pitchers to the win.

Jacob Naughton got the start for Aycock, and after a shaky second inning in which he surrended four runs on five hits, he settled down to pitch 5 1/3 innings.

He allowed eight hits on the day, while only walking one and striking out six.

"I thought Jake Naughton did a fantasitc job," head coach Charles Davis said. "I thought he got better as the game went on."

After Naughton, the Golden Falcons turned the ball over to senior lefty Bobby Hampton.

"That was kind of our plan going in," Davis added. "we were going to let [Naughton] get to the fifth inning and then bring Bobby in because Bobby didn't throw a whole lot on Tuesday night."

Hampton, who earned the win, pitched 1 2/3 innings without allowing a run on two hits.

He also walked one and struck out two.

The game was encouraging for Davis and his staff, who saw his team bounce back from an early defiicit against one of the better teams in North Carolina.

It was another classic in a long-standing rivalry between the two teams.

"Me and Coach Mills from Conley have a long history of games like this," Davis said. "The last couple years he's had our number. The key tonight was us not getting down after we went down four to nothing."

As the final two weeks of the regular season begins, it's wins like these that teams build a foundation around.

"It's going to set the rest of our season straight," Robertson said. "We're going to be higher up in the conference because we took care of business, so we should be good."

At the plate, both Robertson and third baseman Hank Smitherman had two RBI, with Hampton adding an RBI of his own.

Aycock's next game is on Tuesday, when they head to South Central to take on the 10-5 Falcons.

Packard pitched a complete game for the Vikings, giving up six hits and striking out nine and walking four.

The defense committed one error.