Daniel Meadows was brilliant in pitching a two-hitter as the Leopards beat North Central Texas 3-0 on Wednesday in the Northern Texas Junior College Athletic Conference opener for both teams, extending TC’s winning streak to nine and overall record to 10-9.
Right after that, however, Don Williams and the Lions turned the tables on the Leopards and ended their brief ownership of that winning record.
Williams threw eight strong innings and TC committed four errors as North Central won the doubleheader’s second game 4-0 on a sunny, windy afternoon at Danny Scott Sports Complex.
“Now I can get a haircut,” Temple coach Craig McMurtry joked. “I said I wouldn’t get my hair cut until we got above .500, but then the guys said I couldn’t get it cut while we were on this winning streak.”
Temple and North Central will finish their four-game series Saturday with a noon doubleheader in Gainesville.
Wednesday’s split continued the teams’ recent history of competitive duels. Last March, Temple was swept at North Central but responded with a home sweep over the Lions, including a 1-0, 18-inning win in which Meadows’ bid for a no-hitter was broken up after 7 2/3 innings.
Then in May, North Central beat Temple 5-2 to eliminate the Leopards on the final day of the NJCAA Region V Tournament in Lubbock.
Said McMurtry of splitting Wednesday’s games: “It’s frustrating, because the scenario we talk about is to sweep at home and try to at least split on the road.”
Meadows did nothing but frustrate North Central in Wednesday’s seven-inning first game.
TC’s 6-6, 235-pound sophomore left-hander allowed two singles, retired the side in order six times and never let a runner advance past second base.
Locating his fastball well and disrupting the Lions’ timing with effective curveballs and changeups, Meadows struck out three batters and didn’t walk any.
“It was my off-speed stuff, really,” said Meadows, who has signed with Texas Tech. “It was cool and windy and I really had to pitch today. We know North Central is a very solid team, so it’s real good to get ahead of them early.”
McMurtry said Meadows’ performance was the best since his stellar 7 2/3 innings in the marathon win against NCTC almost a year ago.
“Daniel threw extremely well,” McMurtry said. “Early on he was using his fastball, then he worked in the change and got his curve over. He was pretty much in control the whole game.”
Meanwhile, the Leopards’ offense pieced together enough production to support Meadows’ effort.
With two outs in the bottom of the first, Nick Anders showed plenty of hustle as he stretched a hit to right-center field into a double and scored on Johnathon Moore’s single to right for a 1-0 TC lead against lefty Mark Cohoon.
After Meadows stranded two runners in the second, Michael DeLaRosa’s leadoff hit and Tabor Smith’s hit-and-run single led to Matt Loughrey’s sacrifice fly to center for a 2-0 advantage.
DeLaRosa reached on an error to start the fourth, and another Smith hit-and-run single gave Temple men on the corners before Travis Trial’s hard single to left pushed the lead to 3-0.
TC then had runners at second and third but failed to score, and in the sixth the Leopards wasted Smith’s leadoff triple to center.
But with Meadows on the mound, that didn’t matter.
“We didn’t really crush the ball, and we missed some opportunities with men on third with less than two outs,” McMurtry said. “But we did have some guys come through and that gave Daniel a nice cushion.”
However, Temple’s formula didn’t work nearly as well in the nine-inning finale.
It was scoreless until North Central pushed an unearned run across in the fourth against freshman right-hander Zach Butler, who was relieved by Hunter Scott after putting two runners on to begin the sixth. Scott got a strikeout and a double play to escape that threat.
The Lions added a run in the seventh and two in the ninth to make it 4-0, and the Leopards, despite getting several runners on, never broke through in Williams’ eight innings and then in Tanner Chitwood’s ninth.
“Their pitcher did a good job, but there were three or four times we had runners in scoring position and we let him off the hook,” said McMurtry, whose team was limited to four hits. “When we had a man at third with less than two outs, we couldn’t get a hit.”
Temple High School product Tristan Gaines will pitch TC’s opener Saturday.
gwille@temple-telegram.com
