By JASON KING
Leader sportswriter
Mention Harding Academy athletics, and most people will think of football, track or girls basketball.
Baseball may be added to that list after today. The Wildcats take to Baum Stadium in Fayetteville at 12:30 this afternoon to battle Marmaduke for the 3A state championship.
The diamond ’Cats (27-3), playing in only their fifth season, went through the postseason virtually uncontested. An 11-8 win over Glen Rose in the first round of the Region 2 tournament ended up as their toughest regional test, with blowouts over Conway St. Joseph in the semis and an 11-1 spanking of Bauxite in the finals to earn the No. 2 seed out of the West in the state tournament.
The home field advantage the Wildcats enjoyed at their own Wiggins’ Field during the regionals carried over just up the street at Jerry Moore Field, Harding University’s home field and site of this year’s 3A state tournament.
There, Harding Academy continued its assault on 3A baseballwith a 13-3 blowout over Lamar in six innings. The toughest playoff test to date came from Gurdon in the quarterfinals, when the Wildcats had to rally from a one-run deficit in the fifth inning to claim a 6-4 win.
That set up a semifinal game with Corning on Tuesday. Harding Academy fans packed the stands and were treated to a 10-4 Wildcat win behind with another dominant performance from junior hurler Matt Lincoln. He improved his season record to 11-1 with a 4-hitter, but head coach Dennis Rine said that Lincoln’s sterling record is no guarantee that he’ll get the nod today.
“It will either be Braxton Bennett or Matt Lincoln, but we haven’t decided yet,” Rine said. “Whichever one starts, the other will be at shortstop. Coach (Scott) Diles and I have been weighing the pros and cons, debating back and forth trying to decide, and of course, they are both campaigning for the job.
“Both of them know the situation, and both of them are very competitive, but it will be one of those game-time decisions that coaches have to make in situations like this.”
As the host team for the state tournament, Rine and the HA staff had the luxury of scouting every team on hand, including all three games Marmaduke (16-8) played on its way to punching a ticket to Fayetteville.
Rine says there are plenty of reasons to be impressed by the Greyhounds, but none more than senior ace pitcher Trent Smith.
“We were able to work up a pretty decent scouting report on them by hosting the state tournament,” Rine said. “We got to see three games, so we know more about them than we have most of our opponents all year.
“They’re obviously a very competitive team to have made it this far, and they have an outstanding pitcher that we will have to try and match up with.”
The Marmaduke ace sat out the first 10 games of the season after sustaining a broken foot late in the final weeks of basketball season, which led to all but three of the Greyhounds’ losses this season. He has compiled a 6-1 record this season.
According to Marmaduke coach Larry Willis, Smith’s best pitch is the breaking ball. He throws in the low ‘80’s, and sports a 28-7 career record at MHS.
“Trent’s always been a winner for us,” Willis said. “We really think that if we had him from the start of the season, we would probably be 24 or 25-3 ourselves. We depend on him.”
Marmaduke struggled at times offensively this season, but business has picked up for the ’Hounds in the last two weeks with the addition of a batting cage to their in-progress field reconstruction.
“We know we’ll get a good game from our big hitters,” Willis said. “But I think we will need hits from some of our guys in the bottom of the lineup. Harding is a team that can put it in play one through nine, and I think we have to pick up some hits further down in the order to compete.”
The Wildcats have had their tests throughout the season, but for Willis and his Greyhounds, test doesn’t even describe their struggles over the past two seasons. A tornado wiped out their home field before the 2006 season, forcing the Greyhounds to play 49 straight games on the road.
As for nerves, and the majesty of Baum, Willis says his battle-tested team has played away games for so long, that the field they play on is of little consequence.
“We’ve had such a stretch of playing on the road, that it doesn’t bother us to play away,” Willis said. “We play as well on the road as we do at home, we’re so used to it.”
The Wildcats have shown their hand from the first of the season, and were predicted by many to go all the way this year after losing to 3A-2 foe Abundant Life in last year’s semis.
Rine says that the disappointment of coming close the past two seasons has added gas to the fire. That, along with plenty of returning experience, has helped catapult the Wildcats into the title game.
“It was a good experience for us last year just to make it to the semifinals,” Rine said. “Most of the guys from that team returned this year, and they have that experience now. We set a goal when our season ended last year that we needed to be back. The kids have been focused all year, and now they’ve been rewarded by making it past the semifinals.”
Rine said the key to winning will be in approaching today’s game with the same confidence and calm demeanor that his team has possessed all season.
“We talked about it (on Wednesday),” Rine said. “We want to go in there with a business-like attitude and be focused. We don’t want to change anything now. We’ll just keep doing what we’ve been doing.
“That’s going to be the key for us, is to stay focused and know what we need to do.”
