When teams begin a season, there are two schools of scheduling philosophies. One is to pad a win-loss record with victories over lesser opponents.
But for teams like Jones County with aspirations of claiming a region title and a postseason push, there’s a desire to use that portion of the season to get primed for games against region play.
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So even after getting wins against Wayne County and Jeff Davis, two ranked teams, to start the season, Jones County continued its quest for top-flight competition last week. After a 6-0 home loss on Tuesday against Houston County, JCHS split a pair of games at Saturday’s Blue Devil Invitational in Tifton, losing 6-3 to Lee County and closing things out with a 7-4 win against Tift County.
“Obviously, you want to win every game, so it’s a good thing that our eyes got opened,” Greyhounds head coach Noble Coley said of Tuesday’s loss to the Bears. “But it’s also a bad thing because we did some things that were very uncharacteristic of us.”
The Greyhounds will raise the curtain on region play Friday at Eagles Landing before hosting the second game next Monday.
Unlike games so far, contests like the ones starting Friday will count toward region win-loss records for JCHS, which tied for second in the region last season. “We’re going to compete against Locust Grove, Ola, and Union Grove to win a region championship, so games like this don’t matter,” Coley said.
“This was a good game to show us a good opponent, and that’s what they did for us.”
The Greyhounds may have lost by six tallies to the Bears, but the overall story of the night went deeper than that for Jones County.
One place that was evident was on the pitcher’s mound.
After being touched up for four runs in the first inning, starting pitcher Cooper Rice bore down, holding Houston County scoreless the rest of his time on the mound.
“He kind of had some stuff elevated in the first inning, but look at what he did after that inning,” Coley said. “He came in and threw his butt off.”
Drew Williams would come along in relief for JCHS for a pair of innings of work. He overcame one error to only allow one run while an inning later pitching his way out of trouble, preventing another runner in scoring position on an error from crossing home plate.
“You take some of those things away, we’re right there in it,” Coley said.
The Greyhounds showed plenty of fight at the plate as the game went on, putting five runners in scoring position in the final three innings.
