MURFREESBORO — The last time the Greeneville baseball team played at Blackman High School in 2018, Jacques Gillespie-Taylor crushed a 3-2 fastball nine miles over the center-field fence for a three-run, walk-off homer that punched the Greene Devils’ ticket to the state tournament championship game.
On Tuesday night at Blackman, the Devils didn’t need such heroics. They had Carson Quillen on the mound.
The junior right-hander went the distance to pitch Greeneville past the Signal Mountain Eagles 4-1 in its opening game of the Class 3A state tourney.
The defending state champion Devils improve to 25-12 and advance to play South Gibson – a 5-1 winner over Station Camp – in a winners bracket game at 12:30 p.m. central on Wednesday at Smyrna High School.
In Quillen’s seven innings, he gave up two hits, walked three and struck out 10. He threw 118 pitches, 73 for strikes.
“I had pretty good stuff,” Quillen said. “I would have liked to have worked the pitch count down more for later down the road, but we’re not worried about that. At this point, it’s game by game. We’ll get there how we get there.”
Greeneville and Signal Mountain were supposed to play at 6:30 p.m. at Smyrna High. But when officials couldn’t get Smyrna’s stadium lights to come on, the game was moved to Blackman.
With a game still being played in front of them, the Devils and Eagles didn’t get under way until nearly 10 p.m. with the game ending around midnight.
“(The delay) was definitely interesting, very unexpected,” Quillen said. “I’m not sure how they didn’t know the lights (at Smyrna) didn’t work. We ended up having to play a late game and we have an early game (Wednesday). But, honestly, I think it worked out in our favor. I think it really relaxed our guys.”
Greeneville pushed across two runs in the bottom of the first inning for a 2-0 lead.
Quillen reached second base with one out when his popup was misplayed in center field and scored on a single up the middle by Colton Richards.
Richards moved to second on a passed ball and scored when Kaine Ricker doubled the opposite way to the right-field corner.
“That was a huge job by Kaine and Colton had a really good day at the plate, too,” Quillen said. “We have a lot of guys doing a really good job.”
Greeneville made it 3-0 in the fifth when Richards tripled to center with one out and scored on a passed ball.
Quillen cruised through the first five innings, allowing just one hit, walking one and striking out nine.
He ran into some trouble in the top of the sixth, issuing back-to-back walks with one out before giving up an RBI double.
Quillen bounced back, though, inducing a popout and getting his 10th strikeout to end the inning.
Greeneville made it 4-1 in the bottom of the sixth when Corbin Cannon worked a two-out walk, took second on a wild pitch and scored on a single to left by Maddox Bishop.
Greeneville finished with eight hits. Richards was 3-for-3 with a triple and an RBI, Ricker was 2-for-2 with a double and an RBI, Bishop had a hit and an RBI, and Kobe Mundy and Noah Murray each had a hit.
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