MP baseball uses tournament as redemption lesson

To get his team back on the right page, Mountain Pointe coach Brandon Buck took a page out of a football playbook.

His Pride baseball team had just lost 5-1 to Scottsdale Saguaro on the final day of the Saguaro/McClintock Tournament - the first of two games that Thursday. Granted it was a 9:30 a.m. start, but by all accounts, they came out flat.

So MP huddled up, a common postgame appearance at baseball games when teams don't perform up to their normal capacity.

Typically, the worse a team plays, the longer the postgame huddle.

First, Buck took his turn. Then assistant coaches. Then Buck again. Finally, only the players remained, though the coaches kept a watchful eye.

Had the Pride gotten the message?

Amongst the players themselves, the chat continued.

"That's what you want," assistant coach Brad Rogers said. "You want (a player) to stand up and be a leader if need be."

As baseball is the sport of infinite second chances, another game was waiting around the corner.

The Pride took the field less than an hour later against Jefferson, a team from Washington, and it appeared the half-hour chat had worked.

Junior Nick Lira, who hadn't been on the mound much for MP early in the season, got the start and threw four scoreless innings, striking out three.

He helped his case in the fourth with a two-RBI double to give the Pride the lead, then junior center fielder Nick Mancuso - who had had a two-run homer and an RBI single the day before - continued his hot-swinging ways with a bases-clearing double to break things open in the sixth.

MP went on to win 7-1.

"Guys got opportunities that second game," Buck said. "Guys are taking advantage of it. With the way we played the first game, it was good, especially with a lot of younger guys out there."

Mountain Pointe wound up going 4-2 during the annual spring break tournament, including wins over Tempe McClintock and Phoenix Arcadia.

But with tournament games no longer counting towards the AIA Power Rankings, which determine seeding for the state tournament, the wins only translated to game experience. Officially, the Pride are 2-2 and No. 20 in the rankings.

"It gives you an opportunity to play guys in some different spots and give other guys some looks," Buck said. "I wouldn't say it puts pressure on the guys that are in (starting spots), but it lets them know that there's someone knocking on the door.

"If someone's always challenging the guy in front of them, everybody's getting better as a team. And that's what we want to try to have happen."

In the short span of three weeks to open the season, the Pride played 16 games, going 10-5 with a game against Gilbert Feb. 27 going seven innings before it was delayed due to darkness.

"That's a lot," Buck said.

Which is why MP won't get back on the field until March 25, with a game at Yuma Cibola. After matchups with Casa Grande and Glendale Mountain Ridge, Central Region play then starts April 1 at Tempe Corona del Sol.

"Now we've got to kind of sit back and get into our region play and see how it goes," Buck said.