By CURTIS ROCKWELL/Sports Director

PEARL — With Vancleave battling to stay alive and win its second state championship the man who led the Bulldogs to their first one earned another one Thursday night.

Daniel Best, now in his sixth season as the head coach at Brandon High, led his Bulldogs to the Class 7A state championship with an exciting 1-0 win over Hernando here at Trustmark Park. The title, the historic first ever handed out at the new Class 7A level, is the first in 57 years for the Bulldogs.

Like Vancleave is trying to achieve, it was also the second ever state crown in Brandon program history, the other coming in 1967.

Best and Brandon won game one on Tuesday night 5-2.

“These guys fought, clawed and did the little things right and bought into what we were doing and kept working hard every day and it paid off,” Best said. “It’s unbelievable.”

Best and his squad knocked off a pair of “Southern Six” squads en route to their state championship, beating Biloxi in three games in the opening round and then sweeping past Ocean Springs in the Class 7A South State semifinals.

In fact, the Bulldogs wound up 8-1 in the playoffs with that lone loss coming to the Indians 5-1 at The Biloxi Sports Complex.

Although Best spent just one year at the helm of Vancleave resulting in the only state title in program history, the former All-American pitcher at the University of Southern Mississippi spent almost a decade in the coaching ranks along the Mississippi Gulf Coast.

He spent three seasons as the pitching coach at both Biloxi and St. Patrick before serving as an assistant for one year at VHS before being elevated to the top spot.

Best and his team qualified for the first-ever Class 7A state championship by getting past longtime arch-rival Northwest Rankin in the South State finals. The Bulldogs swept the Cougars 6-3 and 10-6 after the teams split a pair of games in Region 3-7 play during the regular season.

That split decision gave Northwest Ranking the top seed in the league for playoff purposes and dropped Brandon to the number two spot.

“We’ve been counted out throughout the playoffs and these guys kept finding ways to get it done,” best said, Thursday night.

Now, a day later, it remains to be seen if Best’s former squad can bounce back to also earn its second state championship in school history. Vancleave is down 1-0 in the best of three Class 5A after falling to Lafayette 8-7 in dramatic fashion in 12 innings Wednesday night.

Vancleave must win game two on Friday and then game three on Saturday to accomplish what their former head coach just did.