1999

Willis K's Northeast By Austin Bishop The Meridian Star MCC eliminated, 4D say other than when we offered him a scholarship two years ago maybe we made the right deci– sion_" before this tournament was to win two games," Clark said. "Because we felt like if we could win two and get to Sunday t hat the excitement of Sunday would take care of itself.

"I felt like I could do some– thing when I got out there today," Willis said. "My slider was working real good. I got the fasthall over fifst pitch most of the time, then I would go back to my !=!lider and get them out with it." "He did a super job," said Northeast head coach Ray Scott. '"l'h~ book on him was he was a tough pitcher and he had two or three pitches working today for strikes." - Willis is now 10-5 on the year with tHe win. ·with the win East Central moves into today's round of action against Delgado Community College. The Warriors.have to win two games in order to claim the Region 23 championship. "All we asked these' guys

East Central Communitv College head baseball coach Jamie Clark only has one major problem with star pitcher Jason Willis. "My only gripe with Willis is that his momma and daddy didn't have twins when they haa him," Clark said. Northeast Missisgfppi must have thought Willis was twins on Saturday afternoon, as the big sophomore right-hander struck out 18 batters and hit a two-run homer to lend East Central to a 7-3 win in the elimi– nation round of the Region 23 Tournament being played at Meridian Community College's Scaggs Field. "Eighteen strikeouts and two walks in a playoff is almost unbelievable," Clark !'laid. "There is not a whole lot you can

"Now they have got to go out (today) and play hard and play on emotion and we will see what happens," Clark said. Northeast took a 1-0 lead in the top of the first inning thanks to an ECCC error before the Warriors tied it up in the bottom of the inning when they com– bined a Northeast error with singles by Brodie Meadows and Willis. East Central exploded for three big runs off Northeast starter Josh Dowdy (2-3) in the bottom of the second inning to go up 4-1. Brent Page scored on a wild pitch and Joey Allen followed with a two-run single to take care of the ECCC offensive dam- See Willi~, Page 40

Willis eo~tlnued from page 1D age;

\Villis did hb part offensively wiOl a t\\ o-run homer to left fieHt His homer followed a biz– zaJ·e play in which the Northeast catcher dropped ~ foul ball by Willis. Had the foul bee.n caught, ECCC'!' Lee Martin would have likely have been doubled off first base. ~s1ead, Willis made it hurt with the big homer. ~ortheast scored two in the top•of the :-:ixth to cut it to 6-3 l>efsre the Warriors added a· sin– glexun in the bottGm ofthe sev– enth to cJo,..e out the scoring.