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Baseball: Hawks oust Eagles

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By ADAM ADKINS

aadkins@tampatrib.com

Published: May 9, 2009

SEFFNER - All season Armwood coach Mike Wrenn has preached the importance of hard work and the need to do the little things. He believes that message has resonated within his team, and it's starting to pay off.

While Friday night's game wasn't exactly a flawless one for the Hawks, they did enough of the little things to make up for the mistakes in a 5-3 victory against Brandon in a Class 5A regional semifinal, a win that puts Armwood into its first regional final since 2000. The Hawks will host a best-of-three series starting Friday.

"It's really exciting to watch, especially as a coach," Wrenn said. "It's rewarding to me and all my coaching staff that they're actually maturing and starting to do all the little things better and better every game."

Armwood senior right-hander Robert Benincasa went the distance to improve to 11-0, allowing seven hits while striking out seven. One of those strikeouts actually led to the game's first run in the second inning, when Brandon's Spencer Dewey scored from third on a wild pitch after Vernon White swung through strike three in the dirt.

It didn't take long for the Hawks to respond. They scored four runs in the third on six hits, getting RBI singles from Zack Powers, Joe Cartwright and Josh Spano, to take a 4-1 lead.

Brandon's Spencer Haynes singled home a run in the fifth and later scored on a wild pitch to make it a 4-3 game. Down 5-3 in the seventh, the Eagles (21-7) got the tying runs on base with one out, but Benincasa finished it off with a groundout and a fly out to put the Hawks (24-5) two wins shy of a place they've never been in program history - the state tournament.

"It's great," Benincasa said. "I think we're going to do it."

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