Baseball: Mountain Pointe's start to region play rocky

So this is what the Central Region is all about.

Mountain Pointe baseball is learning all too well over the past week-and-a-half.

The Pride, winners of the early-season Scottsdale Invitational and owners of a 15-6 record to start the season, have hit a skid at the start of region play, beginning 0-3 following an 8-4 loss to Chandler Basha at Tempe Diablo Stadium on Thursday.

"We made a couple of mistakes here and there," Pride coach Brandon Buck said after the loss, "and when you've lost a few in a row, when you make a couple of mistakes, it's going to come back and bite you right in the butt. Because if you're winning and playing great, you can make mistakes and get away with them.

"We're just trying to find a way to get a win, to continue to play hard and then find that right spot to get it done."

After winning the Scottsdale invite in early March, the Pride went 4-2 at the McClintock Tournament then parlayed it into a six-game winning streak.

But following a 3-3 stretch against perhaps the state's best competition -- defending champ Chandler Hamilton, runner-up Gilbert Mesquite, semifinalist Scottsdale Desert Mountain, current No. 1 Brophy College Prep and current No. 5 Glendale Mountain Ridge -- MP has since dropped games to Tempe Corona del Sol (twice) and Basha.

Corona run-ruled the Pride, 13-3, last Tuesday and followed that with a 13-4 win two days later. Both games were blown open late.

"I think that we're playing well enough to win, it's just little small aspects that we've got to kind of slowly figure out as a team and we'll be alright," Buck said.

Including Pride rival Desert Vista, the Central Region's four teams were all ranked in the top eight of the AIA's Power Rankings at the beginning of the week.

"That's what you get when you're playing in the Central Region," Buck said. "All four of us are pretty doggone good teams. It's pretty amazing. You've got a dog fight everyday, and you tip your hat to those guys."

When the Pride and Thunder kick off their season series next Tuesday, it'll be yet another playoff-caliber gracing MP's schedule. The school has already played six of the teams in the power ranking's top seven, something Buck said could prove valuable in the playoffs. Desert Vista, currently No. 2, will be the seventh.

"That's why we play the schedule that we do," Buck said. "It gives you a good understanding of where you sit and where you're at and if you can play with those teams.

"It takes maybe the nervousness out of it sometimes when you get into the postseason," he added. "If you're facing a team that normally you might not have faced before, it kind of raises the bar a little bit. But if you face the Brophys and Desert Mountains and Mountain Ridges and Coronas and Desert Vistas and everybody (during the regular season), when you get in (the playoffs), you're like, 'Hey boys, we know we can play with them, we've played them and let's go get it done.'"