Pitching propelling Panthers into state
BENTON – With Tuesday’s split with the Little Rock Christian Warriors this past Tuesday to close 5A Central Conference play, the Benton Panthers will take the 5A Central No. 3 seed into this week’s 5A State Tournament to be held at Majestic Park in Hot Springs. In Thursday’s first round, though, the Panthers will take on the West No. 2 seed Greenbrier Panthers at 5:30 p.m. at Lakeside High School in Hot Springs, with the other half of the firstround participants playing at Majestic Park.
It is no secret what has carried the Panthers (20-8, 8-4 Central), which started the season on a 14-game win streak, this year.
“Our pitching has been phenomenal all year,” Benton Coach Mark Balisterri said. “We’ve pretty much had a chance to win every single game we’ve played, just because of our pitching. Pitching-wise, I think we’re as good as we’ve ever been, overall. If we can figure out a way to score some runs, we’ve got a good chance of winning every game here on out.”
“Our goal is to focus on scoring a certain amount of runs that we feel like will win the game for us. Right now, we think that magic number is four. Our team ERA is like 1.7 something and I feel like if we can score four runs in a game, we have a really good shot of winning. That’s giving up more runs than what we normally do and we still win.”
The Panther pitching staff has sported an earned-run average even lower than Balisterri’s claim, with a
1.40 ERA on the season, led by a sophomore left-hander Dalton Adair, who leads Benton with 49.1 innings pitched and 69 strikeouts, and a 1.56 ERA while going 5-0. Junior Jake Jones is
right there, too, also 5-0 with a 1.21 ERA, striking out 65 in 40.1 innings pitched.
While that duo and more, including senior Ethan
Perry and Dawson Turner, and juniors Seth Mejia and Logan Hope, has carried the Panthers pitching, it’s the offense which has been inconsistent.
“It’s almost like one of us goes into a slump, the whole team goes into a slump,” Balisterri said. “We would only have one or two guys have a good day at the plate. We’ve just experienced a bad run of hitting and the thing about it is, at times we don’t strike out very many times, we’re just hitting balls right at them.
“Ethan Perry (.366 average) is the leading hitter on our team and he’s struggled lately, but it’s not like he’s not putting the ball in play. He’s making contact, he’s just hitting everything right at people. We just have to keep going and stay with our approach and hopefully when it counts we’re going to get those big hits. We’ve lost eight games this year and six of the eight games we lost was by one run and we had a chance at winning the game, we just didn’t come up with the big hit.”
Other than a 10-2 nonconference loss to 6A Central Conference champ Cabot, the Panthers have been in every game this season because of that pitching. Benton has lost by a total of just 11 runs in seven of its eight losses, including by a total of just five in its four Central losses.
“It’s just been one of them things,” Balisterri said. “If we get hot at the right time next week, we got a great shot at winning it because we’ve got good enough pitching to win the state championship. A lot of people can’t say that. If we get to the second round (because of the first round’s opposing team’s ace), we’ve got a good shot at winning because we’re going to be every bit as good or better than the team we’re playing.”
Not only have the
Panthers lost those one-run games, they also won them, too, with four one-run wins on the season.
“We were getting that big hit and this is what I told our guys going into next week, ‘There’s not one team in Arkansas that has been pressure-tested like we have,” Balisterri said. “We’ve lost six onerun games. We’ve won two or three or four one-run games. This team has been put through the pressure. If we can just handle that pressure a little better than what we’ve handled it so far, we’re going to get that big hit and win that one-run game.”
The Panthers will get a nice tuneup before starting state, hosting the Catholic Rockets (No. 5 team in Arkansas per maxpreps. com), also at the top of the 6A Central, Monday at Everett Field at Panther Stadium.
“Catholic is a great team,” Balisterri said. “I figure they might be back here (Everett Field at Panther Stadium) in a couple weeks playing for a state championship.
Good team, well-coached and we’re looking forward to playing them. I’d rather play a team like that than just a scrub out here.”
The Panthers, ranked
10th by maxpreps, definitely will not have a scrub against No. 8 Greenbrier (20-7, 12-2) on Thursday.
“They’ve got one good pitcher, Jordan Huskey,” Balisterri explained. “He pitched for us when he was a ninth-grader. He’s a left-handed pitcher that has great command of three pitches. He’s going to be really good.
“The good thing for us is we just faced the best three lefties we’ve seen all year in Sylvan Hills, Little Rock Christian has two lefties. Very comparable to Little Rock Christian’s (Reece) Tarini kid. Not too overpowering but has command of his pitches. We just have to be patient. He’s going to get his outs, we just have to get a big hit or two here or there, get runners on base, get them over and get them in.”