Trinity baseball gets ready for district’s Goliath

Coming off a pair of losses to Southlake Carroll last week, the Trinity baseball team is in need of some marks in the win column. The task won’t get any easier this week, though, as the Trojans face the top team in the state and the No. 1 team in the nation, as ranked by MaxPreps.

Carroll’s 8-1 and 1-0 victories against Trinity last week left the Trojans at 2-6 in district play. The Dragons got an RBI single in the bottom of the sixth that was the difference in Friday’s pitcher’s duel.

“I told the kids I can handle losing those kinds of games,” Trinity coach Will Averitt said.

It’s the kind like that 8-1 loss earlier in the week to Carroll that keep him up at night.

“If we get beat by a better team, so be it,” he said. “But if we go out there and boot it around and give it away, that’s not good.”

Next on deck for the Trojans is Coppell, which enters the week unblemished at 20-0 and obviously undefeated in District 7-6A play. The Trojans are on the road Tuesday and host the Cowboys on Friday.

“We’ve got four games left, let’s just go out and play good baseball,” Averitt said. “These guys are one of the best teams in the nation. Let’s go out and play good and see what happens. Why not? Why not be able to sit around here 15 years from now and say, ‘We beat one of the best teams in the country.’”

Handing the Cowboys their first loss of the season would not only be a boost of confidence for the Trojans, but could boost their fading playoff hopes. Mathematically, two losses still wouldn’t eliminate Trinity from the postseason. If Trinity could sweep Richland next week and then get help in the form of Colleyville Heritage sweeping Richland a week later (when Trinity is on bye), Richland and Trinity would be tied at 4-8 in district play. Got all that?

Of course, Averitt would rather not think about all the permutations and just watch his team play well.

“We can only take care of what we can do,” he said. “We don’t want to go into that last series with Richland not playing well. We want to have some confidence. Obviously, it would be great to win at least one of these games against Coppell.”

This story was originally published April 11, 2016 at 1:13 PM with the headline "Trinity baseball gets ready for district’s Goliath."