CENTRAL ARKANSAS BASEBALL CLASSIC

South splits with North

Little Rock McClellan’s Calvin Wilbon slides safely past the tag of Little Rock Catholic catcher Matt Morris on Thursday during the Central Arkansas Baseball Classic in Little Rock.
Little Rock McClellan’s Calvin Wilbon slides safely past the tag of Little Rock Catholic catcher Matt Morris on Thursday during the Central Arkansas Baseball Classic in Little Rock.

— Picking off runners at third base is highly unusual at any level of baseball. On Thursday, Dylan Cross seemed to make it a habit.

Cross, who had a 6-1 record for Class 7A state champion Bryant, picked off runners at third in back-to-back innings, helping the South earn a 7-2 victory over the North in the first game of the Central Arkansas Baseball Classic at UALR’s Gary Hogan Field.

The North, behind 2 tworun singles from North Little Rock’s Ryan Scott and Maumelle’s Ryan Brown, came back to win the second game 4-3.

In the first game, the South spotted Cross a 2-0 lead in the first inning, but the Bryant pitcher gave up back-to-back singles to Jacksonville’s D’Vone McClure and Little Rock Christian’s Josh Alberius.

After Scott moved the runners up with a groundout, Cross used a pickoff move that caught McClure off guard. Mc-Clure was tagged out at home in the rundown for the second out of the inning.

“We picked off quite a few this year,” said Cross, who was named the South’s MVP. “In high school, we work on that almost every day. It just kind of comes as second nature to us.”

“You only see that when Bryant plays,” joked Sheridan Coach Mike Moore, who coached the South team. “When we came off the field, I said, ‘Good, balk, er, I mean good pickoff.’ [Bryant] must work on that 24 hours a day. Heck, when we played them, they picked four of us off — two off third and two off first. We know how to do to do it, but we can’t seem to copy it.”

In the second inning, Cross gave up an unearned run, but he got out of a jam by picking off Greenbrier’s Matt Burgess.

It did not hurt that Bryant teammate Jordan Taylor was playing at third.

“I don’t watch them,” Cross said of the base runners. “I don’t know if they have a big lead or a small lead. I have no clue.”

The South scored seven runs in its first three at-bats. Malvern’s Colton Welch and Hot Springs Lakeside’s Logan DeRosier each had two hits for the winners. Taylor, DeRosier, Watson Chapel’s Justin Dardenne, Sheridan’s Jake Smith and Lake Hamilton’s Dalton Daniels all drove in runs for the South.

Arkansas Baptist’s Ashton Harper hit the first pitch he saw in the fourth inning over the left-field wall for the North. Earlier in the game, Dylan Boone of Sylvan Hills drove in a run with a groundout.

In the second game, Scott lined a 3-2 pitch into center field to break a 2-2 tie in the fifth. Earlier in the game, Scott, the North’s MVP, drove a pitch to the center-field wall for a triple.

Watson Chapel’s V.J. Dixon and Zach Bradford each drove in runs for the South in the second game.

The South had the bases loaded in the seventh, but Little Rock Catholic’s Conner Gilmore got out of the jam when he got White Hall’s Chris Bryan to ground back to the mound.

Boone worked around two errors in the fifth inning and picked up the victory for the North.

GAME ONE

South ................................241 000 0 — 7 8 2 North .................................010 100 0 — 2 5 3 Cross, Fineley (3), Nelson (5), Taylor (7) and Smith, Carter (5); Burgess, Harbin (2), Kohlstedt (4), Hunter (6), Gilmore (7) and Morris, Harper (4). W — Cross. L — Burgess. 2B — Rucker, DeRosier. HR — Harper. GAME TWO

South ................................000 200 1 — 3 9 0 North ................................. 002 020 x — 4 5 2 DeRosier, Smith (3), Nannaman (4), Bradford (5) and Carter; Eller, Moore (3), Boone (5), Hopkins (6), Gilmore (7) and Hunter. W — Boone. L — Nannaman. 2B — Ware. 3B — Scott.

Sports, Pages 25 on 05/25/2012

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