Brentwood High School’s baseball team rallied to beat host Mt. Juliet 3-2 in a Class AAA sectional game Saturday and reach next week’s TSSAA Blue Cross Spring Fling state championships in Murfreesboro.

It is believed to be the first time since 1998 that Brentwood High School has made a state tournament appearance, Coach Popovich said.

“This is a really big deal,” the BHS coach said. “It’s a big deal for our school, it’s a big deal for our parents and our community, and it’s a big deal for our players and especially our seniors.  They have had a lot upheaval in the time they’ve been here, and they have persevered. This is a very important moment.”

The Bruins came back from a 2-0 deficit after scoring single runs early against winning pitcher Cody Shelton, who threw six strong innings.

“He just got a couple of bad breaks in those two innings,” Popovich said. “A guy chopped one that we thought was going foul and it stayed on the line, but he was pitching well.

“Their starting pitcher really had us baffled the first time through the lineup, throwing a lot of off-speed stuff. We all felt like it was a matter of time before we would get to him.”

Brentwood brought through in the fifth and had an opportunity in the sixth but the Bears closed the door.

Hunter Anderson’s RBI single scored Tanner Walker from second for the big hit in the seventh.

Closer J.D. Cage came on to get set down the batters 1-2-3 in the bottom of the seventh.

“He really did a great job,” Popovich said of Shelton. “We needed a big outing out of him. He showed why he’s been the workhorse of this pitching staff the last few years.”

Shelton, who had a nagging knee injury earlier in the basketball season, suffered a severe sprained ankle toward the end of the Bruins’ upset of No. 1 and undefeated Blackman in the state basketball quarterfinals.

The injury, coming during the Bruins’ historic first basketball state tourney, impacted Shelton’s baseball season.

“It’s big on several levels,” Popovich said of Shelton’s performance Saturday. “From a personal standpoint, Cody has been a mainstay of not just the pitching staff but our whole baseball program for several years.

“We were fortunate in one respect. We have enough talent we didn’t push him too soon. On the flip side, he’s a competitor who wants to be out there. It was a tough process to get him back in the full swing of baseball. But we knew going into the end of the year, he was really starting to get in a groove at the plate and getting a little more command of his pitching. We knew it was just a matter of time.”

Although Shelton wasn’t getting as much action as he had hoped, “from our perspective he was peaking about the time we needed him about,” the BHS coach said.

Brentwood won the regular season in District 11-AAA, but didn’t make the finals of the tournament — but the district voted to send the regular-season champion to regions.

“The games we lost were against Centennial, which is also going to state,” Popovich said. “. . . We did not quite achieve all the things we hoped . . . but we won the regular season championship and that was enough to get us into the next round and we took care of business.”

But the extra-inning losses to Centennial in the district tournament and region championship, along with some other different situations, have helped the Bruins in the long way in experiencing close, competitive games, he said.

“I’m just really proud of these guys,” the coach said. “We’ve had so much adversity this year. Several times we’ve had devastating losses that could have wrekced our season, but we persevered time and time again when it looked like we were out of contention.”

The Bruins have some top-notch players including Vanderbilt signee Bryan Reynolds at first base and Naval Academy recruit Adam Johnson on the mound. But it’s the depth that makes this team special enough to reach state, Popovich said.

“We have so many really good players and if you take our pitching staff we can run out legitimately six, eight, even 10 guys over a course of days,” he said. “What we don’t have is a lockdown pitcher the way Tullahoma does or Columbia did, a guy you expect to win every single game.”

But Brentwood has enough pitchers and matchups to make the most of its staff, and that includes with the players in the field too. In Wednesday’s region final against Centennial, hottest hitter Aaron Maher for instance wasn’t even in the lineup.

“With all that depth, certain guys do not get to play as much as they think they should,” Popovich said.  “The difference is what’s happening now and what I’m so proud of our guys is the acceptance that everybody’s got a role. Maybe it’s not the role you hope for yourself, but the role the team needs .

“The last couple of weeks we’ve come together as team, and everybody has taken responsibility of even small roles.”

Source: BrentwwodHomepage.com