Knights Advance Again! Beat East Paulding Raiders 12-5

Schubie had a huge tournament including 2 Doubles and
3 RBI's in the Win over the East Paulding Raiders.

This weekend was a bit of a grind for the Marietta Knights at the East Carrollton Sports Complex. They went 0-2 in pool play. It wasn't bad baseball, but it wasn't great and they didn't seem to get a single break. They played a very good Carrollton Storm team tough and trailed 5-3 after 5. The Storm got their bats going and blew it open with 6 runs in the 6th to make it an ugly 11-3 final. The lone highlight for the Knights was Luke Martin's continued dominance on the mound. Luke threw 2 shutout innings with a strikeout.


The second game wasn't much better as the Knights fell to the Georgia Octane 8-1. The Knights hit
the ball hard throughout the game, but it was always right at the defense and the Octane's defense didn't make any mistakes. This led to a humorous and dubious Knights' first. The Cherokee Black was signed up for the tournament but didn't show up. Instead of calling it a 4 team pool, USSSA ruled that it remained a 5 team pool and that the Black forfeited their 2 games. By rule, that meant the black lost each game 7-0 (1 run per inning of a regulation game). Now the Knights and the Black were both 0-2 in the pool with the tie breaker going to fewest runs allowed. The Knights gave up 8.5 runs per game, while the Black only "gave up" 7. Yes, the Knights finished 5th in the pool behind the 4th place team that never even showed up at the park. This got a lot of laughs around the cages Sunday morning, but the Knights committed to just playing hard against whomever the USSSA told them to play.

George Finishes Last in the Knights Rain Delay Dance Off

That turned out to be the East Paulding Raiders. Marietta made it clear they wouldn't be the butt of the joke for long. Jackson Tysinger opened the game with a single. He stole second and then advanced to 3rd and scored on ground balls from Luke and Gil Hastings to give the Knights a 1-0 lead. Trailing 3-1 in the 2nd, Mason Doyle walked and stole 2B. Hunter Williamson brought Mason home on a single to CF and scored on a huge double from Austin Hansell that tied the game. Garrett Wells singled to push Austin to 3B and a balk brought Austin home and gave the Knights a 4-3 lead. Tied 4-4 with 2 outs in the 3rd, Mason got things started again when he reached on an error and stole 2B and 3B. Hunter hit a hot shot that the Raiders' SS couldn't handle and Mason scored to retake the lead 5-4. East Paulding answered again and tied it at 5 in the bottom of the 3rd.

The Knights gave the ball to Austin Hansell and he was awesome. Austin closed out the game with 4 shutout innings and 4 strikeouts. At one point Austin retired 8 straight Raiders and he twice stranded runners at 2B and 3B. While Austin was shutting down East Paulding, the fired up Knights offense was putting the game on ice with 5 runs over the final 2 innings to secure the 11-5 bracket victory. Austin Schubert was the offensive hero with 2 doubles and 3 RBI's. Gil Hastings, Hunter and Austin also had 2 hits and Gil scored twice, Hunter had 2 RBI's and Austin had a double. Jackson closed out the game defensively by making 2 straight great catches in CF for the final 2 outs of the game. It was huge bracket win for the Knights to advance them into the Semi finals of the Silver Bracket.

Presley Field holds a Raider close to 1B.

The win matched the Knights up with the West Georgia Rebels who had just knocked off the East Marietta Spikes. The semi final was an epic battle the saw several lead changes and was locked in a 7-7 tie with 2 outs in the bottom of the 6th. A 2 out, 3 run double gave the Rebels a 10-7 lead that the Knights couldn't match. It was a thrilling game and the boys were down after the final out. But they recognized that they'd played in a thriller and played some very good baseball to finish a strong day. It was a good day and the Knights once again improved and grew as a baseball team. Luke threw another 1 2/3 scoreless innings to finish the weekend unscored upon. Luke also went 2 for 4 with a double, 2 RBI's and 2 runs. Gil, Schubie, Hunter and Presley also each had 2 hits and an RBI.