Reed Freeman pitches for New Iberia.

Two teams on the opposite ends of the baseball spectrum closed out the regular season Saturday as New Iberia Senior High played host to Hanson in a non-district contest.

On one side was NISH, safely in the playoffs, looking for its 20th win of the season and seeking a chance to move up one spot in the power rankings.

On the other end was Hanson, 17th in the Division IV power rankings, on the outside looking into postseason play, hoping a win and a little luck would get them into the top 16 and into the postseason.

The visiting Tigers played well but it was NISH that came away with a 6-2 win and solidified its postseason dreams while Hanson was left wondering what could have been for the 2021 season.

“The game was a microcosm of our season,” Hanson coach Ryan Stout said. “We showed hints of being a good team but we just never got around to playing winning baseball.”

Reed Freeman, Luke Landry and Dylan Ruffin combined to allow two runs over seven innings with Freeman and Landry throwing five innings of scoreless baseball.

“We came in today not knowing if we were going to play because of the weather situation,” NISH coach Eli Lewellyn said.

“Maybe our team as a whole was looking a little ahead to the first round of the playoffs

“We need to take care of business at hand. We ended up doing that but I told the guys that we could have played better, we could have played sharper today.”

Hanson finishes the season with an 11-13 record.

“We have a good junior class coming back and most of our pitching,” Stoute said. “We think that we have some possibilities of putting together a good team for next season.”

NISH (20-14) now waits to see where they will be in the playoffs as brackets will be announced today. It is expected that the Jackets will be at either Zachary or Southside in the first round.

“The team that we play will be a quality baseball team, a well-coached baseball team,” Lewellyn said. “The great thing about the playoffs is that everybody is 0-0, regular season stats really don’t matter. We put ourselves in a position to get ahead and now it’s a matter of not making mistakes.”