Tigers win two
TORI J. NORRIS/THE GREENVILLE STANDARD
The McKenzie Tigers improved their record this season winning two of their three games last week.
The Tigers split a double header with Hillcrest on Monday night winning the first game 15-5 and losing 10-3 in the second game.
Tiger’s senior pitcher Chris Shufford had a great night pitching the entire first game. He had 11 strikeouts and only allowed 3 walks and 9 hits.
Shufford was also successful at the plate batting 2-for-2, with one RBI and 3 stolen bases. Jackson Vickery was patient at the plate and walked 3 times and batted 1-for-1. Vickery also had 4 stolen bases.
In the loss against Hillcrest, three Tigers took the mound to pitch. Combined the pitchers had 7 and only allowed 2 walks.
At the plate, Vickery and Jones both batted 2-for-3. Vickery had 2 singles and Jones had a single and a double.
“The first game, I thought we played pretty well,” said Coach Tony Norris. “We did some good things on offense that allowed us to win. Chris pitched really well for us, saving us some arms for the second game.”
“I felt we didn’t have the intensity we had in the first game,” said Coach Tony Norris about the loss to Hillcrest. “However, we only struck out 4 times. Hillcrest was just able to make the plays when we put the ball in play to get the outs and keep us from scoring runs.”
Last Friday, the Tigers had their second win for the week beating Greenville 9-3. Shufford had another successful night on the mound. Of his 98 pitches he had 62 strikes. He had 9 strikeouts and allowed only 2 walks and 8 hits.
Shufford led the Tigers at the plate batting 4-for-4 (single, double and two triples) and 3 RBIs. Senior Seth Keeney batted 2-for-3 and had 2 RBIs and Vickery also batted 2-for-3 (2 singles) with 1 RBI.
“Chris performed well on the mound again,” said Coach Norris. “We had guys who made some timely hits that put us in the position to put runs on the board. I felt like for the most part our defense performed well, with just a few errors.”
McKenzie will travel to Hillcrest on Friday night for another double header with the Jaguars. First pitch will be thrown at 4 p.m.
