As Jim Mora, head coach of the Colts, once put it “Playoffs? Playoffs?”

For the HHS baseball team, the playoffs won’t do; they’ve got their eyes on the state championship ring.

And with good reason too, as they just won the largest baseball tournament in the county: the 26th Annual Saladino Tournament.

Hillsborough edged out a 3-2 win over Durant. Surprsingly, HHS won without one of its more dominant pitchers, and didn’t even bring in closer Kevin Williams.

It was right fielder Michael Burgess who pitched all seven innings. Aside from giving up only two runs, Burgess hit a two-run triple in the 5th to give the Terriers the lead.

The Saladino Tournament shouldn’t be the only thing the Terriers win however. Many of the players stoutly believe that anything less than a state championship will be a disappointment.

Marco LaMonte, 2B, says that “our team’s too good to go deep into the playoffs and lose in the first round in districts or regionals....we have All-County players at every position, and Michael Burgess, a first round draft pick in the outfield. The talent level is too high [to lose].”

Burgess himself says that anything less than a state championship would be a disappointment because “I feel we have the best team in the state.”

The team seems to be dominant in both phases of the game, pitching and hitting. “Our pitching staff’s great and our hitting is great also, it just works both ways,” says Lamonte.

Burgess agreed, saying “Both [phases] are a threat because most of our guys can go both ways; they can pitch and they can hit.”

The team has eight seniors (three are pitchers) and so understandably there could be a feeling of desperation to win this year, but the players don’t think so.

“I don’t think there’s any desperation; I just think we’re just going to let it all flow, let the pitching carry us and let the hitting carry us,” says LaMonte. “We’re going to take it game by game.”

Don’t think that the team is cocky though, just confident, but overconfidence isn’t an issue.

Losses to Blake and Middleton brought the team down to earth, LaMonte said.

Head coach Pat Russo said “these guys trained hard in the wight room, they’ve put in all their extra hours of batting practice, all their extra time and everything that they do...it’s just that anything less than a state championship would be unacceptable no matter what.”

In his 11 years of being a head coach, Russo said “I’ve never had a team like this...I would definitely say it’s the best team I’ve ever coached.”

The team had games against Alonso and Riverview before districts, starting today.