The Douglas baseball team will be facing the Reno Huskies in a regional-title showdown at Reno High School at 1 p.m. today.
Recordcourier.com will be providing updates throughout the game, whenever there is a change in score or in pitching.
- Both teams have their entire pitching staffs at their disposal after each team breezed cleanly through their respective brackets with three wins in as many games. Reno will mostly likely start ace Tom Jameson, a 6-7 Division I prospect headed for Nevada next year, although starters Zach Sanford and Griffin Kirsch will be available as well.
- Douglas coach John Glover has an interesting decision to make on the mound as his three starters -- Tyler May, Tyler Hoelzen and Michael Whalin -- all had success against the Huskies during a three-game series earlier in the year. May took a no-decision earlier in the year, striking out three, walking two and putting up six scoreless innings after getting jostled for three runs in the first. Reno went on to win 7-6 in extra innings. Hoelzen struck out nine and walked one in a 9-0 win later the same day. Whalin struck out five and walked two the next day in a 13-3 win in Reno.
- A little more background on the possible starters: May struck out 8 of 9 batters in a preseason scrimmage against the Huskies. Jameson and Hoelzen went head-to-head in the league championship series opener last season. Jameson took an early exit after the Tigers scored five runs in the first inning while Hoelzen pitched a complete game with eight strikeouts and four walks for the win. Reno did not use Jameson during this year's three-game series at the midseason point. Douglas saw just about every other available Reno pitcher during the series, a total of nine different pitchers.
- Douglas is riding a 13-game win streak coming into the title game. Reno is riding a 15-game streak. Both teams' last Northern Nevada loss came against each other.
- Douglas has five players who were on the roster during the 2007 Northern 4A Regional Championship Game against Galena: Tim Rudnick, Tyler May, Tyler Hoelzen, Troy Torres and Beau Davis, all sophomores at the time. Rudnick (SS), May (RF) and Hoelzen (P) started the game.
- This will be the fourth time Douglas has played in the large-school regional title game. The previous years have been 1989, 1998 and 2007.
- Douglas has only won one regional title in the three major boys sports (Football, basketball and baseball) since moving up to the large-school classification in 1980. That came from the baseball team in 1989.
- This will be the 12th time the Douglas athletic program has played in a regional title game in the last five years. Girls' soccer (2008), Boys' Soccer (2007, 2004), Volleyball (2007, 2005, 2004), Boys' Basketball (2008, 2007), Softball (2004, 2007) and Baseball (2007, 2009) have all made trips. Only football and girls' basketball have not been to the title game during that time period among the team sports at the school. Of those, only two teams have come away with wins.
