"Never." That was the response Corinth American Legion Baseball coach Dale Bain gave when asked if he had ever been a part of a tournament that had 213 runs scored in nine games.

"I've never seen anything like this," said the Corinth coach, who watched his team win 19-18 and 21-17 in two state-tournament games.

Not even in USSSA youth baseball.

"You don't expect this at this level," said Bain, a former USSSA coach, whose Legion team had seven players with two or more hits against Hub City on Monday afternoon, "but everybody is so low on their pitching.

"We were actually probably sitting in better shape than Hattiesburg (Hub City) for this game, and then it kind of just got out of hand."

Said Hub City coach Anthony James, "We kind of ran out of our starting pitchers, so we were scrambling. These tournaments are tough when you play that many games back to back. You run out of pitchers."

Hub City and Corinth – which was shut out 16-0 in the winners' bracket final earlier on Monday – combined for 38 runs and 42 hits in Monday's losers' bracket final.

James said the second and sixth innings of Monday's game – when his Bombers surrendered seven and eight runs, respectively – killed his team.

"They battled," Bain said of his team's hitting performance. "They stayed in there after it and kept hitting the ball. That's the key to it."

James had to credit Corinth for regaining the lead after blowing a 10-1 advantage through three innings.

"I would have never thought they would have gotten back up when we came back and got the lead," James said. "Hats off to these guys. They kept pounding the ball and pounding the ball. They're a good fastball hitting team it seems like. They hit some of our pitchers' fastballs pretty good.

"There was nothing you could do with some of the hits they got. They hit a lot of home runs (five) this game."

Even though the extremely warm conditions have taken a toll on the players, watch us be in store for a no-hitter during Tuesday's championship round. Perhaps this tournament is due for one – after all, just about anything else you can imagine to happen has happened.

Aside from tossing a no-hitter, Pontotoc should have a well-rested pitching staff for Tuesday's championship round.

"We have a couple of guys we haven't even thrown yet," said Pontotoc coach Nickey Browning, who wasn't sure on Monday who was going to start Tuesday's 4:30 p.m. championship game. "We've got some other guys that we will throw if we need them."