The baseball team (13-10, 3-4 in district) will face Wylie East tonight at home at 4:30 p.m. as the Leopards look to break a three-game losing streak.
“[Friday’s] game is extremely important to us,” sophomore Matt Piccirillo said. “We need to win this game to get our record back to .500 and get us back in position to make a run for playoffs.”
With half of the season over, head coach Jason Wilson said that he is comfortable with where his team is at but stressed the necessity of a win on Friday.
“We need to win tonight and get on a run,” Wilson said. “There is plenty of time left in district, but we need to get going. We still look good for playoffs. But with [seven] games left, we need to get on a roll.”
The team fell to the Raiders 7-1 on Tuesday after allowing seven runs in the first inning. The Leopards scored only one run in the top of the fourth, despite out-hitting the Raiders 6-5.
“We didn’t get hits at the right time when we needed them,” Piccirillo said. “We got a couple leadoff guys on, but then we followed it up with three straight outs, so that didn’t help us out at all. We needed to focus on putting the ball in play and hitting it hard, and we couldn’t do that very well for the majority of the night.”
Having played three of the top four teams in the district already, the team’s remaining schedule (versus North Forney (9-10, 2-3), Mesquite Poteet (6-15, 1-6), and Royse City (13-12, 3-3)) is somewhat easier compared to the first half of the district season.
“We’ve had sort of a rough start, but I believe we can make a run and still finish high in the standings and be successful in the playoffs,” senior Luke Howell said.
