By CURTIS ROCKWELL/Sports Director

A pair of Mississippi junior college baseball teams are battling it out for a chance at a national championship in Enid, Oklahoma this week.

And several “Southern Six” products are right in the thick of things.

Pearl River and Eat Central will face off for the eighth time this season Friday night, and for the third time in four days, and this time the winner will move on to play for the crown.

The Warriors and Wildcats split a pair of games over the past two days, with ECCC winning 6-5 in 11 innings Thursday night following a 7-6 PRCC win on Tuesday.

The winner of Friday’s game will move on to meet Pasco-Hernando on Saturday at 7 p.m., for the Div. II national championship.

“We knew it wasn’t going to be easy. They made a couple more plays than we did, just like we did the other night,” PRCC head coach Michael Avalon said Thursday night. “The last thing I told them before we walked off was that I love them and am proud of them. Baseball is a tough game. It’s not always going to go the right way. We have to show up tomorrow and make more plays. These guys will show up and leave it all on the field.”

In Thursday’s game, former East Central High product Eli Smith had a pair of hits for ECCC in the win, and Andrew Nielsen of George County earned the pitching win.

Smith also started for the Warriors and worked the first six stanzas.

For PRCC, a pair of Gulfport High products in Nico Williams and Ethan Garner each slapped home runs for the Wildcats. Williams cracked a three-run homer in the fourth frame that plated both Garner and East Central High product Logan Terry to erase a 3-1 deficit at the time, and Garner added a solo shot to make it 5-3 two innings later.

Garner paced PRCC at the plate with a game-high three hits.

On Tuesday, Vancleave’s Max Miller, Peyton Lacy of Pass Christian and Jacob Johnson of Pearl River Central all saw action on the mound for PRCC in the win.

Eli Smith had two hits, including a double, for ECCC and he also drove in two runs.

East Central, the fifth seed in the event, stands 46-15 overall while PRCC, the second seed, sits at 52-9.