Same song, different verse. Great midweek start from a young guy, no offense to back him up.

Tech is really good this year. They just had a nice little 14 game winning streak that got snapped on Sunday by Edwardsville. Tonight could be a rough one.

Grounders to the second baseman were killing us on offense yesterday. It seems like batting averages aren't translating at home, at least not at the home games I've been to.

Skole could also do a better job coaching on when to run home from 3rd. We've missed out on 2 runs tonight because the runners were too eager.

Good win last night against a quality team. The team is getting there. I'm ok with the aggressiveness. I'm ok with Skole being aggressive; follows from La Russa, and I think he had a pretty good record. They're young, but there is hope.

A community college almost pulled off the shock of the ages beating a double A professional team of the Los Angeles Dodgers....Hopefully someday the Bucs can arrange some exhibitions like this....


Chattanooga State may upset the Chattanooga Lookouts one of these years at AT&T Field, but Tuesday night was just another close call.

J.T. Wise hit a two-run homer to left field in the first inning and Yasiel Puig drove in two runs as the Lookouts held on for a 5-4 triumph over the Tigers in a seven-inning exhibition. The Lookouts won last year's meeting 1-0 and prevailed 4-2 two years ago.

"The last three years we've done a pretty good job, and we're proud of that," Chattanooga State coach Greg Dennis said. "We want to make it at least competitive, and we come in expecting to scrap for our lives to try and keep it close. We felt like we had some guys who could swing it a little bit, and we hit a couple of balls pretty well that allowed us to hang around."

Read Walden, Jordan McDonald and Casey Mannion had triples for the Tigers, who are 26-8 and ranked 18th in NJCAA Division I. The Tigers trailed 5-2 with two out in the sixth inning when Luke Shipway hit a two-run double to right.

"They were bringing it in the mid 90s, so I was expecting a fastball," Shipway said. "I got ready early and put a good swing on it. This was exciting. It was a Double-A professional ballclub, and we were playing them close."

Puig reached in the first inning on a broken-bat infield hit, and Wise followed with his drive over the scoreboard. Puig had another infield hit in the second inning with the bases loaded to make it 3-0, and his groundout RBI in the fourth made it 4-2.

The Lookouts took a 5-2 lead in the fifth on a Jan Vazquez sacrifice fly to center.

"I thought this was nice, because it kind of gave us a dry run," Lookouts manager Jody Reed said. "I was very impressed with Chattanooga State. I think Greg has done a fantastic job there, and they were clearly well-coached and fundamentally sound."

Contact David Paschall at dpaschall@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6524.

I realize this is a baseball post, but I wasn't sure where else to ask this. Does anyone have any insight as to why our softball team is god awful? 0-11 in conf play this year, 1-17 last year, 3-17 the year before, and 5-15 in 2009. Is the A-Sun softball league that good or what?