Despite winning their final 12 games of the regular season and 16 of their last 17, having the third highest RPI in the Fourth Region and the fourth most wins, the Logan County Cougars are not the top seed in the 13th District Tournament, which begins Monday night at Franklin-Simpson’s Greg Shelton Field.
And the Cougars will be playing a Greg Shelton-coached team at Greg Shelton Field. That team, however, is not Franklin, but it has won 22 game in 32 tries.
Shelton has coached Beech in Tennessee. Russellville, Christian County and now Todd Central since his retirement from a Hall of Fame career coaching Franklin.
The reason the Cougars are the number two seed instead of number one is that lone loss since April 1 is to Franklin. The Wildcats are 5-1 in the district, the Cougars 4-2, the Todd Central Rebels 3-3 and the Panthers 0-6. F-S’ lone district loss is to Shelton’s Rebels, not the Cougars.
This is a tournament star-studded with coaches. Shelton has won over 1,000 games and a state championship. Logan coach Ethan Meguiar picked up his 500th win with alma mater this season and joins Shelton in the Hall of Fame. F-S coach Matthew Wilhite played eight years of professional baseball, five of them in Class AAA. Retired police detective Kenneth Edmonds took over the Panthers’ head coaching job in mid-season.
Franklin (18-14) will take on Russellville (3-21) at 5:30. The game between Logan (21-9) and Todd Central (22-10) is estimated for a 7:30 start.
The championship game will be played Tuesday night.