Central Catholic will host Catholic-PC this weekend

After hitting a hot streak towards the end of the season, Central Catholic lost two straight to end the regular season, falling to St. Thomas More and Chalmette last week.
While Central Catholic Coach Tyler Jensen was disappointed in the way his team swung the bat in the two losses, his team did face high-caliber pitching as Jensen said St. Thomas
More used an Ole Miss commit and another solid pitcher, while one of Chalmette’s pitchers used against Central Catholic was a University of New Orleans commit who threw 90-plus miles per hour.
“It was disappointing to see, for sure,” Jensen said. “With that being said, we’re just trying to move on from it and take positives from this season, a district championship and things like
that and kind of build off some of those positives and how we were playing the two weeks prior to that.”
Central Catholic (18-9), the No. 5 seed in the Division IV playoffs, will hit the field again this weekend when it meets No. 12 seed Catholic High-Pointe Coupee (16-12-1) in a best-of-three series in Amelia. Friday’s game is set for a 5:30 p.m. m a t c h u p , w h i l e Saturday’s first game is set for 1 p.m. If a third game is necessary, it will be played at 4 p.m. Saturday.
Central Catholic won the District 7-1A championship with a 6-0 mark and finished 9-1 against Class 1A competition. Its lone loss against 1A teams was a 9-5 setback to Catholic High-
Pointe Coupee in Ascension Catholic’s tournament last month.
Catholic High finished 4-1 in District 5-1A. The Hornets are 7-3 against Class 1A competition.
“They’re very good. At that point in the season, (they) were one of the better teams we had played,” Jensen said. “They swung the bat really well. We saw one of their guys on the mound, a left-hander who was really good. They were just a solid, all-around baseball team.
“I know they went through a little stretch later in the year where they dropped some games, and I’m pretty sure they had some injuries during that time, but they’re a really good baseball team,” Jensen added.
Regardless of whether it was Catholic High or someone else, though, Jensen said the Division IV bracket is balanced.
“I think one of the things about our division is the balance within the division,” Jensen said. “People ask me how I feel about our matchup, and I tell them ‘they’re good.’ Whenever you only have 16 teams make it, 1 through 16 is going to be pretty solid.
“Our other option (if the brackets fell that way) was to play Vermilion Catholic, who we beat twice in one-run games, so no, I don’t like our matchup, but I wouldn’t have liked our matchup against whoever we played,” Jensen added. “I do like our matchup against anyone, though, if we play the way we’re capable of playing, the way we were playing for a couple of weeks there towards the end of the year. I feel like whenever we bring our best to the ballpark, we’re as good as anybody.”
Catholic High comes into Friday’s contest after having tied St. John 2-all in its season finale. Prior to that last week, the squad fell to Berwick.
In addition to facing one another, the teams have numerous common opponents this season. Catholic High lost to St. John twice and tied the squad once, beat Lafayette Christian Academy, lost to University Lab, lost to Episcopal twice and lost to Opelousas Catholic and Berwick.
Central Catholic defeated St. John, fell to Berwick and Episcopal and beat University Lab, Lafayette Christian Academy and Opelousas Catholic.