PREP BASEBALL: Golden Falcons blank Saints on the road

By Ben Coley
Published in Sports on April 12, 2017 9:57 AM

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bcoley@newsargus.com

DUDLEY -- Charles B. Aycock's bats aren't going to blow you away.

But that isn't their job. This year's Golden Falcons prefer to stick to the basics. It's baseball 101, according to head coach Charles Davis.

With aggressive base running and timely hitting, CBA executed an efficient 5-0 victory over Southern Wayne on Tuesday night. Davis' team needed just five hits to complete the task.

"Hopefully at this stage in the season, our at-bats are becoming better and better," Davis said. "And again, it may not show up so much average wise, but we're grinding at-bats out, getting deep in the count and then putting the ball in play and making things happen at the high school level."

CBA's manufacturing business started in the third inning.

With two outs and no one on, Chandler Matthews drew a walk. After a wild pitch by SW's Aryc Chrisman, Matthews hustled from first base to third. Bradley Pate brought him home with an RBI bunt.

Pate later scored after SW tried to pick a runner off first base.

Speed. Hustle. 2-0, Golden Falcons.

"That's a part of us right there," said Davis, referring to the base running. "We have to in order to be successful. We got to be able to put bunts down as Bradley (Pate) did. (He was) very aggressive on the bases in that situation."

In the six inning, Pate worked for a walk and stole second. He advanced to third after Blake Gipson's hard-hit grounder and scored thanks to a sacrifice fly by Chris Turner.

The final display came in the seventh.

Nolan Harrell led off with a single. Tyler Daniels laid down a bunt and was safe after Chrisman's poor throw to second. Luke Frederick then came up to bat and smacked a two-RBI double.

Meanwhile, the Saints continued to struggle with putting the ball in play and getting runners in scoring position. CBA's Cody Whaley struck out 10 batters and only walked one in six innings.

"Our at-bats were not very good early," said SW head coach Trae McKee. "We were taking defensive swings in offensive counts and we were taking way too big swings when we were down. We didn't make a whole lot of adjustments early."

The Golden Falcons have now won four consecutive games. In those matchups, CBA has outscored its opponents 34-5.

Davis -- who was once at a loss with CBA's lackluster hitting -- is now beginning to see progress. The veteran said much of the improvement doesn't show up in the box score, but it can definitely be seen from the practices and from the team's demeanor.

"That's all you can ask for as a coach -- if you see a little bit of improvement each and every day," Davis said. "And I see that now in our guys...me and Coach (Allen) Thomas and coach (Steve) Brooks have seen us starting to do the little things that we've been preaching."