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SEVIERVILLE – It felt like deja vu for the Morristown West baseball team on Monday evening against Sevier County.

One week to the day after scoring in the first inning against Jeff County only to struggle the next four innings, the Trojans once again got on the board first against Sevier County. And once again, they failed to score after that as Sevier County scored six in the third and two in the fourth to take an 8-1 victory.

With the loss, the Trojans fell to 1-5 on the season and 1-2 in District 2-4A play.

“Tonight was the same thing (as last Monday),” West coach Justin Pickett said. “Jordan (Watson), I thought pitched really well. He came out and gave us a chance. We got the lead early, but they had the big inning and it just killed everything. Tomorrow is another day, and we just have to come out and compete.”

Things started well for Morristown West as Jordan Watson took the first pitch of the game to the left-center gap for a double. Gavin Mitchell bunted Watson to third and a groundout to second by Bryson Jenkins scored Watson and made it 1-0.

However, following the early run, the Trojans recorded just three hits the rest of the way. Those hits were a Tashawn Griffin two-out double in the second, a Tison Johnson infield single in the third and a Cody Blair double with two outs in the seventh.

“It was big to get on the board early,” Pickett said. “We want to get on the board early and add throughout, however we can. But, we just started being over aggressive after the first inning and started chasing up. We were chasing fastballs instead of putting the barrel on the ball. Once we did that, we let him (Drew Mattox) settle in. You let that dude settle in, and he’s going to compete.”

On the mound, Watson got the start and threw 2.2 innings. Watson threw the first two innings without allowing a hit and had two outs with runners on second and third in the third. However, back-to-back-to-back doubles plated four runs and knocked him out of the game.

Bryson Shepard relieved Watson and gave up two RBI singles before getting out of the inning with a strikeout. Shepard would go on to strike out five more batters while allowing two runs.

“Right now, he’s one of our main guys coming out of the pen,” Pickett said about Shepard. “He has some velocity, it’s not overpowering but he locates it well. He has good movement and throws a good breaking ball. We’re asking a sophomore to come in and be our main guy out of the bullpen, and he did a good job tonight. Defensively, we just have to be a lot better.”

Morristown West will be back in action on Tuesday as they host Sevier County. The Trojans will throw Paxton Seal on the mound with the hopes of getting a little bit of deja vu from last Tuesday, a 13-3 win over Jefferson County.

“It’s already flushed,” Pickett said about Monday’s game. “There’s nothing we can do about it now. We’re looking forward to tomorrow. We have Paxton on the mound, and he’s a competitor. We’ve been able to hit here recently, we just have to carry it over to these district games. We’ll be ready to go.”

Grainger baseball falls to Greeneville

GREENEVILLE – The Grainger Grizzlies’ defense wasn’t exactly a thing of beauty in their game against Greeneville Monday night.

The Grizzlies committed seven errors in the game and that helped lead to an 11-1 Greene Devil win. Trever Johnson had eight strikeouts and only three earned runs due to all the miscues committed by Grainger. The Greene Devils jumped on top 3-0 in the home half of the opening inning and never looked back as they cruised to a 10-run win.

The same two teams will meet at The Den Tuesday afternoon for the second matchup between the two teams.