NWC still has chance at 2nd

By Bill Kiser
Kannapolis Citizen
Life for Northwest Cabarrus’ baseball team right now is like walking on a tightrope.
If the Trojans can put their inconsistency behind them and play three solid games, they could find themselves climbing back up the North Piedmont Conference standings.
But if Northwest lets its recent up-and-down play become the rule rather than the exception, then the Trojans could find themselves scrambling to hold onto one of the league’s playoff berths.
Northwest Cabarrus, which was 13-7 overall and 9-6 in the NPC entering Tuesday’s game against Carson, currently sits in fourth place in the conference standings and holding one of the league’s six slots in the 3A playoffs, which begin May 9.
NWC trails South Rowan by just one game and is two games ahead of North Iredell, with three other teams — West Rowan, Lake Norman and Carson — in a tie for sixth, three games back of Northwest.
Should things go right for Northwest, they could climb up the league standings, potentially into second place. But NWC head coach Joe Hubbard said that “it would take everything going right for us.”
“We would have to run the table, and Mooresville would have to lose twice,” he added. “If that happened — and if South Rowan should lose once — then we’d hold the tiebreaker and we’d have second place.
“But that’s a lot that has to happen right there. … Anything is possible, but as good as they are, I don’t see them losing two out of their last three. We would also have to play some of our best ball of the year to win all three games, considering who we have to play.”
But should the Trojans lost their final three games — after Carson, they face NPC frontrunner East Rowan on Friday, then cap their season against Lake Norman on May 5 — and depending on what the rest of the league does, Northwest could slip down in the standings and potentially get frozen out of the playoffs.
“If we can pull off one more win, we can hang onto the fourth seed in the conference and go into the playoffs,” Hubbard said. “But the three teams we’ve got left, we’ve lost to all of them.
“Right now, we’re two games up on everybody and they have a really tough schedule. Just the way the matchups are, it’s going to be difficult for anybody to just run the table. … But this is one of those things where I wish we were playing better than we have been going into the playoffs.”
Northwest Cabarrus split its two conference games last week, beating Statesville 8-1 on April 22, then losing 9-8 to West Iredell on April 25 when the Warriors scored a pair of runs in the bottom of the seventh inning.
That kind of inconsistency has been a problem for the Trojans this season, according to Hubbard.
“It’s been something we’ve done all year long,” he said. “We play really good one game, then we don’t play very well the next game. It’s been that kind of inconsistency that’s haunted us all year long.
“But a lot of things have to go wrong for us to fall out of that playoff spot. Hopefully we can find a little consistency down the stretch here, so we get a little motivation going into the playoffs.”