EMCC’s injury-plagued baseball season comes to a close at home versus Holmes

SCOOBA – East Mississippi Community College's injury-plagued 2025 baseball season came to a close with a pair of home setbacks (15-4 & 7-2) to Holmes during Tuesday's regular-season finale played at Gerald Poole Field on the Scooba campus.

EMCC's season-ending 22-26 overall record and 9-19 MACCC mark snapped the Lions' recent run of making consecutive postseason baseball playoff appearances during each of the previous three seasons (2022-24).

The final score of Tuesday's first contest was not indicative of the closeness of the game through the first seven innings of the scheduled nine-inning opener. The contest was tied at 4-4 through five frames before the Bulldogs took control with two runs in the seventh followed by an eight-run explosion during the eighth inning.

EMCC's only lead of the afternoon came in the opening frame when Sam McClinton walked, advanced to second on an error before stealing third and coming home on Hugh LeMasters' RBI grounder to third base. Despite loading the bases with their first three hitters during their first at-bat of the day, the Lions only managed the solo run off Holmes starting pitcher Holton Hartzog.

The visitors scored the game's next four runs with a solo tally in the second inning on Jacob Lott's RBI triple and three more runs the following frame off EMCC starting pitcher Evan Hilliard, including a two-run homer by Amari Conley.

The Lions battled back to tie the score with a pair of runs in the third inning on Greer Manning's two-run single followed by McClinton's two-out RBI single two frames later.

The playoff-bound Bulldogs began to break open the tight contest by plating a run in the sixth and two more a frame later to move ahead 7-4 after seven innings. With EMCC using a total of six pitchers in the opener, the visitors put the game out of reach by sending a dozen hitters to the plate in producing eight runs in the eighth inning to get to the double-digit, run-rule margin.

Manning, Miles Mitchell and Chipper Moore each had two hits in the opening game to pace EMCC's eight-hit team effort. Both of Moore's hits were doubles after entering the contest in the fourth inning.

The nightcap was also tied during the early innings before Holmes scored five unanswered runs during the middle frames. In the second inning of game two, the two teams traded two-run home runs to produce a 2-2 tie. Will McClure's two-run shot off EMCC starting pitcher Otis Brooks III was answered in the home half of the inning by Moore's first collegiate home run. Moore's two-run blast was one of only three hits allowed by Holmes starting pitcher John Paul Buckner and reliever Josh Fleming, who closed out the doubleheader sweep by retiring EMCC in order during the final inning of the season for the Lions.

The visitors tallied the game's deciding runs by scoring twice in the fourth inning followed by three more scores the next frame. Consecutive run-scoring, extra-base hits by Lott and McClure in the fourth preceded Conley's second homer of the day and Thomas Kuhn's two-out, two-run single the next frame.

East Mississippi's injury-plagued 2025 baseball season was most evident during the final month of the campaign, as everyday starters Caidan Bullard, Ty Murphy and Jackson Rodgers – all .300+ hitters – were not available to participate during the year's crucial final couple of weeks. Starting catcher Josh King, a Jones College transfer, was out of game action for 14 early-season games after getting hurt on the opening day of the 2025 campaign, while the versatile starting infield tandem of Mitchell and LeMasters missed a combined 13 games between them. In addition, Colin Boyd missed most of the season due to an injury after hitting .400 over the first nine games of the year.