Teams looking for inspiration at this week's Northern 4A Regional Tournament only need to remember Wooster last year. After getting handled by Reno during the regular season, the Colts finished third in the Sierra League, beat the Huskies in the zone championship and then went down to Las Vegas and won state.
Don't think Carson coach Ron McNutt hasn't reminded his team about that fairy tale as his Senators open the zone tournament with a first-round game against Reed tonight at 6 at Carson High's Ron McNutt Field.
"Look at last year, Wooster came in third in the league and look at what they did," McNutt said. "Reno beat them all three games, in fact they 10-runned them. And they came through on the winner's side and went down and won state. That scenario can happen to anybody. It's out there. It's just who wants to step up."
Carson (28-6) finished as the Sierra League's second seed. The Raiders (18-15) are the third seed from the High Desert League. In other first-round games, Douglas (19-9), the fourth seed from the Sierra League, plays High Desert League champion Galena (25-6) at 3 p.m. at Ron McNutt Field. At Reno High's Zunini Field, Reno (29-1) plays Elko (14-13) at 3 p.m. and McQueen (18-13) plays Wooster (14-14) at 6 p.m. Three teams from the tournament will advance to the NIAA/U.S. Bank 4A State Tournament next week in Las Vegas.
McNutt and Reed coach John Phenix are familiar rivals when it comes to the postseason.
"The history of regional baseball for a long, long, long time was Carson-Reed," McNutt said. "There's no gimmes in our bracket. Douglas had an outstanding year. We know the tradition Reed has and how they can play and the same thing with Galena. They came in first place, so they had to have been doing something right.
"This is a different type of baseball now. It boils down to a short week of practice and who's mentally prepared and physically prepared and everything else. The team that goes out there and plays good, sound, solid baseball is going to come out of our bracket and go down to Las Vegas."
Solid baseball aren't two words that Carson can use when describing its game against last Friday night against Reno. The Senators, who lost close games in the first two games of the series, committed eight errors in a 15-0 loss in the third game.
"We had won 12 or 13 in a row at the end of the season before the Reno thing and we had played pretty good defense," McNutt said. "And I told the kids that even though we didn't look very good against Reno in the series, especially the last game, you can't let that take away from the things they had done all year. We won 26 games; we lost only eight, and three of those were to Reno, but everybody in our league lost to Reno."
Sophomore Jake Rasner is tentatively scheduled to start tonight's game and junior Scott DeFriez will start the second game of the tournament, which will be played Thursday. If the Senators win one of their first two games, Ryan Henry, the team's third starter, will be available in the double elimination tournament. Relievers Mike Handley, Danny Rotter, Jared Wulff, Zach Caron and Eric Melendez will be important. Jason Alcasas, another of Carson's solid relievers, has been suspended for a week.
"We have a very, very young pitching staff," McNutt said. "We had two kids who had any kind of varsity experience last year, Ryan Henry and Jake Rasner. We feel very good about our staff. The thing is that they understand we've got to throw strikes, we've got to get ahead of the hitters, get ahead on the count and let our defense play behind us. And if we do, we have a chance of being successful."
McNutt moved up Logan Parsley, Royal Good and Wes Osmer from the JV team for the zone tournament.
