By Justin Nails, Trussville Tribune Sports
TRUSSVILLE –The long and arduous track to the 7A baseball crown will be rewarded this weekend as Auburn and Hewitt-Trussville begin their best-of-three series on Friday night. Both Hewitt-Trussville (31-9) and Auburn (33-7) eclipsed the 30-win mark on the season and were only two of the five teams to do so in 7A this year.
The Huskies path to Montgomery began on the road against the reigning 7A champions in the Hoover Bucs where the Huskies dropped game one of the series but bounced back with back-to-back wins to advance. Hewitt-Trussville then welcomed in James Clemens for a two game sweep of the Jets.
From there, the Huskies traveled to Huntsville to take on Bob Jones where yet again the Huskies took the series in a two game sweep. Offense has been the key for the Huskies as they have scored 5-plus runs in every game in the playoffs except for their opening loss to Hoover.
Led by some stellar pitching performances by both Michael Fowler and Carson Skipper as well multi-run games by Skipper, Keith Lanum, and Caden Kirk. The Husky bats have been on fire this postseason and they’ll look to keep them hot against a familiar postseason for in Auburn.
Auburn’s path to the finals began against McGill-Toolen where the Tigers, like the Huskies, dropped game one of the series before winning back-to-back games to advance. The Tigers went the distance again against Theodore before sweeping Smiths Station to advance to Montgomery.
Auburn will look to their senior leadership in Teddy Benda, Brooks Fuller, and Wes Starr to finally get over the championship hump as this will be their third championship appearance in a row for the Tiger seniors.
In 2016, Auburn fell to Hewitt-Trussville as the Huskies defeated the Tigers 6-0, 2-0 for 2016 championship.
Game 1 of the series is set for 6:00 p.m. Friday afternoon at Paterson Field. Game 2 will begin at 10:00 a.m. Saturday at Riverwalk while Game 3 will follow Game 2 if necessary.