By Brad Greer

Normally a baseball team would not be seemingly all smiles after a loss but South Panola was after a 4-3 loss in nine innings to Grenada Wednesday night.

Coupled with a Columbus 2-0 victory over Tupelo, the Tigers sewed up a third place finish in Region 2-6A and a spot in the North State playoffs. South Panola (14-15 overall; 4-5 district) will host Region 3 runner-up Vicksburg (14-9) tonight at 6 p.m. in a best-of-three play-in series. Game two will be at Vicksburg at 2 p.m. tomorrow, followed by game three if necessary.

The winner of the series will play Region 1 Champion Southaven next weekend.

District runner-up Columbus will face Region-3 No. 3 seed Warren Central while district champion Grenada (14-9) receives a first-round bye and will square off against the Olive Branch/Madison Central winner next week.

With the scored tied at three in bottom of the ninth, Will Jordan scored from second base on a two-out error to give Grenada the victory.

After Cody Carson grounded out for out number one, Jordan got the rally started by reaching second on a throwing error. South Panola reliever Taylor Karr then got Javoris Redditt to fly out for the second out of the inning before Paul Liberto’s ground ball was booted that allowed Jordan to race home with the winning run.

South Panola knotted the game at three in the seventh when Andrew Horne singled to lead off the inning and later scored on a Tays Hardy sacrifice fly.

Grenada grabbed a 1-0 lead in the fourth from South Panola starting pitcher Chance Whitten as Payne Horan reach on the first of five errors by the Tigers in the game. Whitten then fanned Tony Drinkwater for the second out before Jaylon Bledsoe slapped a single past third base to drive in Horan.

South Panola answered with a pair of runs in top of the fifth to take a 2-1 lead. Chris Townsend and Horne delivered back-to-back singles to start the inning. Grenada starting pitcher Hunter Bull proceeded to walk Whitten and Hardy to force in Townsend with the tying run. Bobby Epps then delivered a RBI single into right field to drive in Horne, but courtesy runner Matt Jones who was trying to score on the play, was thrown out at the plate for the second out of the inning. Bull then got DeShawn Lindsay to fly out to end the inning.

Grenada retook the 3-2 lead in bottom of the sixth with two runs on, no hits and one Tiger error. South Panola out-hit the Chargers 8-5 on the game but left nine runners on base and also had two picked off in scoring position.

Whitten pitched an outstanding eight innings for the Tigers, giving up five hits and three unearned runs while fanning two and not walking a batter. Karr (0-1) took the tough-luck loss on the mound in the ninth by surrendering an unearned run on no hits. Garth Huddleston picked up the win in relief for Grenada.

Horne and Meek led the Tigers at the plate with two singles each. Blake Darby, Townsend, Whitten and Epps recorded singles. Hardy drove in a pair of runs with a bases loaded walk and a sacrifice fly.