Through most of Thursday’s second game of its best-of-three first-round state playoff series, things were aligning for Jones County to extend the series to a decisive third game.
Starting pitcher Dalton Lowe had hurled a no-hitter through five innings after Jones County scored five runs in the first inning and found themselves one out away from a win.
Flowery Branch, however, didn’t go away.
The Falcons, who scored once in the sixth before trimming the lead to 5-2 in the seventh, tied the game on a three-run homer, going on to win 7-5 in eight innings, ending the Greyhounds’ season.
Jones County ends its season with a record of 21-7, matching its best mark since 2016.
“We’re still sitting here while 16 other teams are playing, and we feel like we had a great opportunity to do that,” Greyhounds head coach Noble Coley said.
The Greyhounds dropped the first game of the series Wednesday 7-3 as torrential rains ended the contest after six innings and pushed the rest of the series to the next day.
Jones County, which got hits from Scarbary and Gage Robinson in the loss, started slow against the Falcons, trailing 6-0 after giving up four runs in the first and two in the second. The Greyhounds got on track late in the first game with one run in the third and two in the sixth, and that carried over to Thursday’s second game.
“We got the bats going later than we wanted to and the rain came. GHSA says that it’s a completed game, which I wish they would look at,” Coley said.
Brayden Lampkin, Cason Taylor and Jonathan Scarbary singled to load the bases right off the bat, and two-run singles by Kaylob Harris and Trent Paulk as well as Lampkin drawing a bases-loaded walk gave JCHS a 5-0 lead.
A pitcher’s duel ensued from there. With Lowe no-hitting the Falcons through five innings, the Greyhounds found sledding tough as well, with their best chances to extend the lead coming when Junior Holloway reached base in the fourth and sixth innings. Jones County could not bring him home, as Holloway was stranded at second in the fourth and caught stealing in the sixth.
“We had situations where we’d like to have put up a few more here or there,” Coley said. “When you strike first like that, you want to kind of put the nail in the coffin.”
But even after Flowery Branch got on the board in the sixth with a single run, Jones County was in prime position going to the final inning, leading 5-1. Lowe buckled down after giving up a pair of singles, retiring two in a row prior to the game-tying homer.
“It’s a tough way to lose, but Dalton, he pitched amazing, probably his best game all year,” Coley said. “We were one out away against a guy who had not really done anything thing against us. Dalton made a good pitch and missed his spot just by a little bit. The guy did what he was supposed to do.”
Lowe was replaced by Harris, keeping the game tied going to the bottom of the seventh, when JCHS had a chance to win it as Lampkin drew a walkTaylor singled and an intentional walk to Davis Upshaw loaded the bases with one out. The Falcons got out of the inning with the Greyhounds hitting into a pair of groundouts, forcing extra innings.
“We had the bases loaded and one of our best hitters up,” Coley said. “You had Kaylob Harris, who up to then had hit everything to the outfield the whole series. He hit a hard grounder to the third baseman and one foot either way, it’s a base hit.”
Flowery Branch took control from there, turning a pair of walks into two runs off a walk and sacrifice fly before JCHS went down in order to end the game.
There’s a palpable disappointment anytime a season ends, but the Greyhounds season also ends following steps forward as a program after Coley’s first year at the helm.
Jones County was a tiebeaker away from being able to host a postseason series, and their third seed for the state tournament came after four postseasons in a row as their region’s fourth seed.
While key offensive losses will include Gage Robinson, Noah Robinson and Lampkin, a nucleus of this year‘s pitchers will return led by Lowe, Paulk, Taylor and Cayden Tidwell.
The work toward next season, by the way, is already underway. Monday morning, the Greyhounds were in the weight room.
“We took a few days off and are back to the grind. That season is now over with, and we have put our nose back to the grindstone and start preparing for next season,” Coley said. “We don’t need to necessarily do things, differently, we just need to do things better. Getting put out in the first round, that’s not something that we want to work to achieve.”
