Meigs County took the long road on its way to Murfreesboro and the Tennessee baseball championships.
McCallie, the other Chattanooga-area baseball team in the Spring Fling, enters the Division II-AA tournament with a 30-5 record and the state's top ranking. The Blue Tornado will play Brentwood Academy in a 5 p.m. EDT semifinal today at Wilson Central High School.
The Tigers, who'll play at the same time at Middle Tennessee Christian as part of the eight-team Class A field, have gotten used to being on the road. They haven't played in Decatur since dropping the District 3 tournament championship to Knoxville's Grace Christian.
In the region semis, they went to Coalfield and beat the District 4 winner 5-0 before suffering a fifth loss to Grace Christian in the region title game. But the Tigers advanced to the state tournament with a 2-0 sectional win at South Greene.
Meigs, which is 27-10 for coach Tyler Roberts, will play touted Loretto (37-7) today.
A state tournament participant for the fourth straight season and the 2014 state champion, McCallie will be playing Brentwood Academy for the fourth time this season.
"It's probably the toughest, closest series we played all year," Blue Tornado coach Greg Payne said.
McCallie won the first game of the three-game series in seven innings, the Eagles won the second in 10 innings and McCallie rebounded to take the third in 12.
"They're a good team from a traditionally good program with a good coach. We had three really tough games with them, and so we're expecting a fourth," Payne said.
Brentwood Academy has three really good pitchers, according to the McCallie coach.
"There's a senior, a junior and a freshman. They're all right-handed and all similar in ability," he said.
McCallie, which has the most pitching depth, likely will start Palmer Steventon, who has a 1.10 earned run average in 49 innings to go with a 5-1 record.
"He actually pitched the game we lost (to BA), but he pitched nine shutout innings," Payne said.
Steventon, a Lipscomb University commitment, hasn't pitched in a game in two weeks due to a slight inflammation in his pitching elbow but has been cleared, and McCallie pitching coach Robert Long told Payne that Steventon looked really good in a bullpen session last Friday.
Contact Ward Gossett at wgossett@timesfreepress.com or 423-886-4765. Follow him on Twitter @wardgossett.