Mizzou Recruits

■ Oak Ridge baseball team pounds Charleston in 5 innings (semissourian.com)

"I can't say enough about the Brett Thomas kid -- what a tremendous young athlete," Charleston coach Michael Minner said. "You know, the sky's the limit for him and he's a wonderful kid -- a competitor. When we come up here, we wanted to see Brett, and we wanted to see how we stacked up early in the year."

■ Thomas perfect in first outing of year for Oak Ridge baseball team (SEMissourian.com)

Senior starter Brett Thomas pitched a perfect five innings in his team's 11-0 road victory.

Thomas, who will play baseball at the University of Missouri next season, struck out 13 of the 15 batters he faced. He fielded a weak grounder back to the mound for the second out of the second inning and required the help of a defender -- freshman shortstop Kelby Brown -- to get the final out of the game.

"I just tried to throw strikes," Thomas said. "It's as simple as that. The first outing you don't want to try anything fancy -- just go out there and pump it in the zone and make them swing it. They haven't seen anything live really all year, so I figured fastballs would be good and then maybe rely on the curveball later."

■ No. 1 Francis Howell hopes to answer the hype (StLToday.com)

Brett Graves was 4-1 with a 1.76 earned-run average last season.
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Perkins said he's clocked Graves at 90 mph on his radar gun, which he said tends to be conservative in its readings.

"My gun has only seen two or three high school guys hit 90 -- Tim Melville and Max Scherzer being two of them -- and those are two quality guys," Perkins said. "A month ago I was up at Mizzou for a showcase ... and walked into a coach who told me to tell (Graves) to stop throwing so hard because he's afraid he'll get drafted too high."

Equally potent with a bat in his hands, Graves batted .477 with 26 RBIs, 19 stolen bases and 40 runs scored last year as the Vikings leadoff hitter. He set a school record with 52 base hits.
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Jake Ivory's eight RBIs Saturday in a 16-1 win over Duchesne broke a school record. Ivory anchors the outfield in center . . .

"Our team has a lot of great leaders," Ivory said. "Overall, everyone does a great job keeping each other accountable for our mistakes and accountable for not keeping our head up when (bad) things happen."

■ Southlake Carroll 3-hits Coppell in district battle (espn.com)

Southlake Carroll ace John Curtiss pitched a three-hit gem against district rival Coppell on Tuesday in the Dragons' 8-0 victory.

Curtiss was able to find success changing the pace with his pitches, striking out four. He worked the outside with off-speed pitches and put batters away with a hard fastball inside.

“We were working fastball in and out and some off-speed,” Curtiss said. “My catcher Patrick Quintanilla calls all my pitches and I trust him. He did a great job calling the game.”