Mexico had a tough road to the Southern Boone Classic tournament championship game.

Mexico vs Moberly Photo Gallery

The Bulldogs had to beat three of the four state-ranked teams in the eight-team field and beat them all to advance to Saturday’s championship game against Fatima at Southern Boone, which they won 10-0 in six innings. After a 2-1 win over Class 3 No. 7 North Callaway on Thursday, Mexico beat Class 4 No. 5 Fulton 10-0 and Class 4 No. 2 Moberly 8-4 in eight innings on Friday. 

“You would hate to see us get hot at the right time,” Mexico senior Sam Ryan said about beating conference and district rival Moberly twice in one week (9-3 win on Moberly’s Senior Night). “I’m glad we’re getting hot right now.”

Mexico (18-10) scored eight unanswered runs — all with two outs — against Moberly (24-6) as Landon Hilderman had the game-tying and game-winning RBI hits to finish 2-for-3 with two RBIs. Ryan pitched the final four innings in relief, striking out five and allowing one walk. 

Hilderman said Mexico has started slow offensively this season and did so against Moberly but shifted gears in the clutch moments. In the fifth inning, Mexico used up two outs before walking twice and having three straight hitters hit the ball the opposite way into right field. Brayden Arnold had one RBI and Ryan had two RBIs in the inning to cut the deficit to 4-3.

“As long as we put the bat on the ball and we’re getting hits, we’re going to do that the rest of the game,” Hilderman said.

Head coach Daniel McCarty said he was glad Mexico was able to carry some offensive momentum from the 10-0 Fulton victory late into the Moberly game. Hilderman, Jaydon Eldridge and Chance McCarty each finished with two RBIs to support six complete innings of six strikeouts, two hits and one walk from Austin Maxwell. 

McCarty said the offense “got blood” in that three-run fifth inning and felt confident it was going to make a run. He said he liked how Mexico advanced runners and even played through adversity, like when the Bulldogs lost two runners on the basepaths to once again force them to score with two outs. Hilderman came through first and then Kaden Benne brought home two runs with a double to finish 2-for-4 with two RBIs.

“He started off really hot, and then in the middle of the season, he started to slump a little bit,” McCarty said about Hilderman. “He started to second guess himself so he went back to the drawing board mentally and erased it. The last five to eight games, he’s been locked in and has been getting our game-winning hits. He’s been stepping up big time for us, especially in clutch situations.”

Hilderman said he is simply trying to put the ball in play to give Mexico a chance to win. He said he believes in himself, he believes the team can come back in moments like against Moberly and he believes in Ryan.

“It was awesome,” Hilderman said about Ryan’s outing. “He’s back now. He’s ready to go for districts.”

The Bulldogs dogpiled Ryan after the game as everybody else seemed to be overjoyed about his performance as well. Ryan joked he came out of the incident with “minor injuries.” 

Ryan did finish with a 1.20 ERA last season, but this season has been a different story. Up to this game, Ryan has been struggling to find last season’s version of himself on the mound. Ryan said he had lost confidence and stopped trusting his stuff but thought Friday night would be different after striking out his first batter swinging. 

“I had full confidence in all of my stuff,” Ryan said. “Every single pitch, I knew I was going to throw a strike.”

McCarty said he thought Ryan looked “locked in” from his previous three to four bullpen sessions. Ryan followed up Moberly with five innings of eight strikeouts and two hits on Monday in a 10-0 five-inning home win over Marshall, locking up Mexico’s first 20-win season since 2014. Before the tournament, he said he let Ryan know he would go to him with the game on the line.

“He looked like himself from last year.” McCarty said. “It was a good feeling to let him have that. It came at the right moment as well.”

The victory on Friday night gave Mexico seven wins in eight games, with the Bulldogs’ only loss, 3-0, coming at Class 4 No. 9 Blair Oaks. Mexico has the No. 3 seed in the Class 4 District 7 tournament to be played at Moberly and will face No. 2 Boonville (15-9) at 7 p.m. May 21. 

Like his players, McCarty was asking, “Who’s next?” 

“I don’t want to brag on ourselves, but we’re climbing up and getting that momentum,” McCarty said. “We’re not going to look back, either.”