VALDOSTA — Like playing one-on-one with an older brother growing up, the Valdosta State baseball team’s season was both fun and disappointing.

Both situations involve talking, having fun, getting to know another person and plenty of losing.

“It was an exciting season,” VSU coach Tommy Thomas said. “I told the boys, even though we didn’t have a winning season and didn’t make the conference tournament, it wasn’t without excitement.

“Sometimes the excitement was on the negative side, but there was not a dull moment during this season.”

The Blazers finished 22-27 overall and 14-14 in the Gulf South Conference with a sixth place finish in the east division.

The Blazers had character all season, evidenced from a 13-7 non-conference start to a late season sweep of North Alabama.

“I’ve said this from Day 1 and after the season’s over, ‘I had some of the best bunch of youngsters I ever coached,’” Thomas said. “And they never stopped trying.”

One thing VSU lacked all season long was production from its bats.

The Blazers tallied 455 hits and a .281 average but just 197 RBIs compared to 246 by their opponents.

“You have to knock in some runs, and we were as bad as just about any team I’ve ever had at trying to knock in the clutch winning runs at the end of the game,” Thomas said. “We had nobody that seemed to deliver when we really, really needed a base hit — nobody.”

VSU lost eight games by two runs or fewer, a trend that could have been prevented with more clutch hitting.

“We had more games ending in strikeouts or weak outs in which the tying or winning run was sitting out there and we could never get that knockout punch,” Thomas said.

The Blazers’ lone hitting threat emerged out of nowhere, as Jared Goff went from being a bench hopeful to start the season to cleanup hitter.

“I told every player this,” Thomas said. “He’s the only player we had to come close to filling the bill of what you can call having a good hitting year.”

Goff led all Blazers’ hitters with a .372 average, 51 hits, 30 RBI, 67 total bases and a .489 slugging percentage.

“There are certain batters that you say ‘I feel good about him being in this spot.’ Well, I didn’t feel good about anybody being in that spot other than Jared Goff,” Thomas said. “If the chips are on the table and now we have to do it, I just didn’t feel good about anybody else.”

With the lack of hitting power, Valdosta State needed to rely on pitching and playing error-free ball.

Blazers pitchers had a better than average year with VSU pitcher of the year Matt Marchant leading the way for starters with a 3.77 ERA and a team-high 71 innings pitched.

VSU’s ace in 2005, Robert Petrucci struggled to a 4.94 ERA after having arm problems in the offseason, but found his swagger in the Blazers final game against West Florida.

“In any one game that he pitched, he would throw more high pitches in one game than he threw the entire year in 2005,” Thomas said. “The last game he looked like a million dollars.”

Converted closer, Justin Lamb also came up big for the Blazers leading the team with 61 strikeouts as well as pitching a one-hit game against North Alabama and being named Gulf South Conference Pitcher of the week.

“We told him we are counting on him being the leader of the pitching staff when he returns next season,” Thomas said.

The Blazers defense didn’t live up to its end of the deal crashing in many games.

“I told them throughout the year,” Thomas said. “If we play mistake free baseball, even without our good hitting, I thought we had pitching good enough, but without mistakes we could play with any Division II team in the country.”

However the Blazers didn’t play mistake free baseball tallying 03 errors.

Despite its losing record and lack of hits, VSU never let down as evidence by a April sweep of North Alabama winning 8-3 and 4-2 before coming from behind to win 12-8.

“That was so sweet to sweep them,” Thomas said. “It put us right back in the running.”

The sweep enabled the Blazers to play for a shot at the playoffs right until the last weekend of the season where they lost two-of-three but salvaged the finale against West Florida.

“We did get ourselves to play right to the last weekend with an opportunity to go somewhere,” Thomas said. “So that still made it somewhat of a rewarding year even with a losing record.

“We carried our hopes to the final weekend, and that’s a tribute to the boys after having such a bad year.”

Throughout the season, despite the pitfalls and statistical limitations the Blazers did not come short on effort.

“They put things in perspective, and these youngsters gave you everything you asked for as far as effort,” Thomas said