By CURTIS ROCKWELL/Sports Director

TAYLORSVILLE — For the second straight series, Resurrection must come up with two straight wins to keep its quest for a third consecutive state baseball championship alive.

The Eagles fell in game one of their Class 1A South State championship series to home-standing Taylorsville 2-1 Friday night. Resurrection must now win Saturday night in Pascagoula and then Monday night back in Taylorsville to move into its fourth consecutive state championship series.

The Eagles have won back-to-back state titles the past two seasons after falling in the state finals in 2021. Resurrection is aiming for its fourth straight Class 1A South State championship.

Resurrection jumped out to a quick 1-0 lead in the opening game of the best of three series, when Carter McCammon singled home Trace Tingle with one out in the top of the first frame to put the Eagles up 1-0 just five batters into the game. 

But that would be all the scoring RCS would be able to manage in the contest. Which, in the end, would prove not to be enough.  

Tartar starting pitcher Ford Matthews took over from that point and shut the Eagles offense down almost completely. After giving up four hits in the first five RCS at bats, including McCammon’s RBI-single, he allowed just four more RCS hits over the next 19 outs recording 13 strike outs in the process. 

After running into a bit of trouble in the top of the seventh, Trey Barnes came on in relief of Matthews with two outs and struck out Luke Schnoor with the tying run on third and the go-ahead run on first to end the RCS threat.

Matthews picked up the pitching win and Barnes earned a save.

McCammon went the distance on the hill but took the tough luck loss for RCS, despite allowing just five hits and possibly deserving a better fate. He was cruising along until the bottom of the fifth.

Armed with that 1-0 advantage, McCammon walked Caden Bester to lead off the stanza. After recording an out, Matthews helped himself out when he stepped to the plate and smacked the second pitch from McCammon for an RBI-double to centerfield that plated Bester to tie things up at 1-1.

After McCammon got another out, his defense let him down when Tartar batter Noah Westbrook put a ground ball in play for what could have been the third out of the inning but was misplayed by the RCS infield into a run-scoring error to put THS up 2-1.

That would be it for the scoring in the game, and ensure that the Tartars came south with a one game advantage in the series.

Tingle had a team-high three hits and Hayden Porter had two hits for RCS, including a double.

Matthews had three hits for Taylorsville, including that run-scoring double, while Brady Quinn also added a double.

In is last series, against Ethel in the Class 1A South State Semifinals, RCS also lost game one on the road at Ethel in a close 3-2 decision. But RCS bounced back with a 9-1 win in Pascagoula and then a 9-8 win back in Ethel to take the series and move on.