For No. 1 Northwest Rankin, 2022 MHSAA Baseball Playoffs all about redemption

The Cougars have unfinished business after falling to Madison Central in last year's Class 6A State Championship series

FLOWOOD — When it comes to the 2022 MHSAA 6A Baseball Playoffs, it’s all about unfinished business for the top-ranked Northwest Rankin.

The No. 1 Cougars (28-2) have had a target on their backs almost since the first week of the season, and has passed nearly every test with flying colors.

But as coach K.K. Aldridge explained Tuesday, none of that matters when it comes to this weekend’s matchup.

The Cougars (28-2) will square off against the Petal Panthers (19-13) this weekend. If they can win that series, they’ll face the winner of Pearl (20-10) and Brandon (24-6) in a cross-county matchup with a trip to a second-straight 6A Championship Series on the line.

More: Updated MHSAA Baseball Playoff Brackets for every class

“I think we were kind of playing with house money last year,” Aldridge said. “Nobody really expected us to be there at the end, and we had a bunch of guys that were in their first year starting or with the team. But I think the loss in the championship has made us even hungrier this year. The focus and intensity the guys have brought to every practice has been fun to watch.”

The Cougars have a lot going for them.

Star pitcher Nick Monistere, who signed with Southern Miss, is almost a shoo-in for Player of the Year. On top of being 8-1 in 11 appearances with a 1.25 ERA and 94 strikeouts in 56 innings, he’s batting an even .400 in 115 plate appearances with 26 RBIs, a team-high 10 doubles and seven home runs.

Monistere only struck out 17 hitters in last week's second-round opener against St. Martin.

If we had a comeback player of the year award, it would go to the Cougars’ No. 2 starter Connor Brooks. The senior only pitched 3.2 innings last season, but has been an instrumental part of this season. He’s currently 7-1 in 11 appearances with a 1.36 ERA and 77 strikeouts in 46.1 innings.

“Those two guys are penciled in to start the first two games of every series going forward,” Aldridge said. “And we’ve got Ryan Herbison coming out of the pen to close things down. Then, if we get to a game three, we’ve got some great options in Evan Rogers (4-0, 1.26 ERA) and Dawson Muenzenmay (4-0, 1.96 ERA) and even Wes White (1-0, 0.00 ERA), who has worked some big innings for us down the stretch.”

Offensively, the Cougars are batting .308 as a team and they’ve scored 237 runs in 30 games — nearly eight runs per contest.

Monistere is leading the way in average, but his battery mate catcher Brady Thomas is right on his heels with a .385 average and has matched a team-high seven homers. Bryce Ainsworth and Muenzenmay are batting .378 and .300, respectively and have driven in a collective 46 runs.

“We struck out too much as a team last season,” Aldridge said. “That was something we worked on hard in the off-season. We decided we were going to have a fight about us, especially with two strikes. Don’t get me wrong — we still strike out. But our number of quality at-bats is way up this year, and that’s made a huge difference. I think a lot of that was getting another year of experience under our belts and learning from our mistakes.”

All that firepower and the new mentality has the Cougars gunning for a state title, but first things first — they’ve got to get by a really talented and determined Petal team this weekend.

The Panthers won their second-round series over Gulfport after losing Game One 10-6 last Friday night. They beat the Admirals 9-5 in Game Two and 5-0 in Game Three to clinch the series.

Petal comes in batting .268 as a team, with a pitching staff led by junior Eli Waters (4-3, 1.21 ERA) that has only allowed 84 runs in 197 innings of work this season.

A quick look at the Cougars’ 2022 schedule shows the Panthers handed Northwest Rankin one of its two losses with a 7-5 win back on March 1.

“They are a scrappy ball club and have been all season,” Aldridge said. “They beat us one time this year, so they know they can do it. (Coach) Jake Mills has done a great job down there in his first year, establishing the culture they want around the program. They play hard and they believe in themselves, and I’ve been around baseball long enough to know if you have those two things going for you, you are tough to beat.”