Local teams prepare for state tournament.
EL DORADO - The last few days have not been kind to Smackover's baseball team.
On Saturday, the Bucks fell to Horatio in the semifinals of the 4-3A Regional Tournament.
On Monday, Smackover coughed up an early 3-0 lead and a one-run lead in the late going to fall to Junction City in the third-place game, giving the Bucks the No. 4 seed for the 3A State Tournament.
However, the loss to the Dragons was much more costly in terms of losing personnel.
Senior shortstop and leadoff man Clay Stringer was hit with a pitch in the helmet, while fellow senior Beau Burson was hit on the left hand with a pitch.
On Tuesday, Smackover coach B.J. Greene updated the statuses of his senior standouts.
"Beau has a broken hand, and Stringer is out with several small fractures in his eye socket and a concussion," Greene said. "He's at a surgeon figuring out what they need to do. I figure Beau is still going to pitch, but he can't swing the bat, so that's two huge pieces of our lineup on a team that just hasn't hit the ball very well all year.
"But it's like coach (Brian) Strickland said, 'You're still alive,' and that's the approach that we're going into it. We've had a lot of bad things go our way this year, but we've got to keep on ticking. That's the way life goes."
Although they may be short-handed, the Bucks (17-16) will look to garner their first win in the state tournament in three years when they take on 1-3A regional champion Greenland (24-8) at 10 a.m. on Thursday.
"They're a good ballclub," Greene said. "They've got a pitcher that throws 77-78 and he spots up his curveball really well. He's a lot like the kid we saw from Fouke (Austin Lawrence). I don't think he has his velocity, but the one thing they do
better than Fouke is they hit the ball up and down the lineup a lot better."
The Pirates enter the state tournament on a roll.
In winning the 1-3A Regional Tournament, the Pirates scored 33 runs in three games, including a 12-2 win over Atkins to win the regional crown on Monday.
Greenland enters the state tournament with an eight-game winning streak and wins in 14 of their last 16 games.
Defense is always a key at this time of year, and Greene said his team will be focusing on that not only because of the Pirates' propensity for playing smallball, but also to get the makeshift defense plenty of reps before Thursday's game.
"They try to play smallball at the bottom of the lineup, so we're going to have to practice that and be prepared for that," Greene said. "We've got about 45 minutes built into two different practices working on bunt coverages and first and thirds.
"It's just something we're going to have to work on. We've got to get a lot of ground balls, because we're going to have Weston Smith move to shortstop and Colt Aycock is going to have to take over at second base on Thursday. We need to get them as much as we can in two days."
After hitting three home runs and scoring 14 runs in the win over Fouke in the regional tournament, the Bucks managed just three hits total in the losses to Horatio and Junction City.
Now with Stringer out of the lineup and Burson unable to swing a bat, Greene said the Bucks will be looking at changing their tactics at the plate.
"We have a group text message, and if you looked at it, you would probably see 800, 900 messages in the past 10 hours trying to figure out that question," Greene said. "We've made up four or five different lineups. Now that we've got fewer hitters in the lineup, we're trying to spread them out and maybe use that bunt game. At times, the bunt game has been very good to us. I definitely think that's going to be part of our gameplan going into Thursday because of the fact that we're going to have to find ways to put pressure on their defense."
Although the Bucks face a daunting task, Greene believes the Bucks have a chance to advance behind Burson, who is no stranger to having pitched in big games during his career at Smackover.
"I truly do believe that if Beau is on, he's going to give us a chance to win," Greene said. "If we can score two or three runs, manufacture some runs somehow, I think we'll have a great opportunity to win the game."