Friday, May. 09, 2008

No Rest for the Jaguars

FMHS Baseball

By John English

Contributing Writer

The Flower Mound baseball team took care of business in the opening round of the playoffs last weekend by defeating Grapevine in a three-game series, and coach Steve Stinson said the road does not get any easier for his team this week.

The Jaguars are playing L.D. Bell this weekend, a team that went undefeated in District 7-5A competition.

"It doesn’t matter who’s in your district," Stinson said. "When you go undefeated, that’s pretty good. For that reason, we know that they are a good team. We scrimmaged them early in the year, and really that doesn’t even count, because it was so far back that you don’t know what’s happened between then and now, so we’ll see what happens."

Flower Mound defeated Grapevine in the first and third games of their series, but lost the second game.

"I’m real satisfied, because we won," Stinson said. "We struggled on Friday night. Their pitcher threw a great game, and we just got a timely hit. The first game on Saturday, they had a left-handed pitcher going, and we just couldn’t handle him. We felt he was their best pitcher for the last two or three weeks, and he showed it.

"In Game 3, it was also a struggle, and finally, in the seventh, we got a couple of hits to lead off the inning, and of course, hitting is contagious, and we ended up scoring six runs in the seventh."

Stinson said he thinks the fact that his team had a play-in against Hebron the weekend before the playoffs started may have actually helped the Jaguars against Grapevine.

"The team was really up after the game on Friday night," Stinson said. "They seemed to be really confident for Game 3, because of what they had gone through the previous weekend, having played Hebron."

Stinson said he also believes the loss to Grapevine in the second game of the series could have benefited his team.

"I’m sure there was something learned from that," Stinson said. "You can’t take anybody for granted, and everybody is in the playoffs for a reason. I don’t think they were overly confident in Game 2, because they were going to Grapevine, and Grapevine over the last two or three weeks has been one of the best teams in that district over there, even though they finished third."

Flower Mound plays the second game in a three-game series at 7:30 tonight at L.D. Bell.