Friday night’s 10-5 loss to Corner might have been a wake up call for Calera, who bounced back to win the opening series of the AHSAA Class 4A baseball playoffs with a 13-0 game three victory.

Chris Anderson pitched the complete game for the Eagles, striking out nine and allowing two hits and three walks.

“That’s the performance we’ve been waiting on all year. He’s had shadows of it at times through the year, but he showed up in this game big,” Calera head coach Stephen Floyd said.

Anderson was the 10th run in the bottom of the fifth for the Eagles to win the game early, scoring on a walk-off grand slam by Zac Isbell. Isbell was 2-for-4 on the day with 5 RBIs.

Corner intentionally walked J.R. Posey and Trent Posey to load the bases to bring up Isbell, who hit the first pitch to left center.

“There was no question that it was going to be gone,” Floyd said. “They were trying to play a defensive situation, but it worked out better for us.”

Calera broke the game open with a five-run third inning.

Trent Posey led the Eagles’ bats with a triple, double and single, while Jeremy Hyde was 2-for-2 with two RBIs and Scotty Reneau was 2-for-3 with an RBI.

The win puts Calera (15-10) in the second round at sixth-ranked Bibb County.

Floyd said the Eagles’ key to winning will be pitching.

“Pitching has got to take care of Bibb County. We can’t give up a lot of free walks, because they take advantage of your pour pitching,” he said. “In both games we lost to them we had a lot of walks. We’ve got to control them from the mound and let our defense take over where we can. Hitting the ball we’ve done fairly well.”

Calera lost the first meeting of the year against Bibb County, but won the second meeting, 3-2, to force a one game playoff to determine the Area 7 championship. Bibb County won that game 11-2 to earn the right to host the second round.

“That’s a tough place to play. Those kids are pretty confident at home. I think we’ve got a good opportunity to be able to beat them. We’ve shown we can beat them at least once. Now we have to take an opportunity to take it to the next level,” Floyd said.