The mid-afternoon thunderstorms that threatened Vicksburg never materialized on Friday, but a storm of a different sort turned Bazinsky Field into a pile of baseball slop.

Vicksburg and Oak Grove made errors of every kind, from bobbles and drops to wild overthrows and tosses in the dirt. In the end, it was Oak Grove that survived the carnage and beat the Gators 8-5 to finish a two-game sweep of the first round Class 5A playoff series.

Oak Grove (25-2), the two-time defending state champions, advanced to face either Biloxi or St. Martin in the second round. Vicksburg finished its season with a 17-11 record.

“That’s probably the ugliest 5A game I’ve seen in the playoffs in a long time,” said Vicksburg coach Jamie Creel, whose team committed seven errors. “Rarely does a fly ball take many bad hops, but there were five of them tonight that took bad hops out there. We just couldn’t catch them.”

Vicksburg’s defense has been shaky all season long, and it finally caught up to the Gators in the playoffs. They committed 12 errors total in the two games, negating a pair of solid pitching performances by Steven and Stanton Price and eliminating the possibility of a first-round upset.

“We had a chance to win both games. If we cut those errors in half in both games, we walk away,” Creel said. “We sweep them in two, no doubt about it, and I’m sure they can say the same thing about their game today. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

The teams combined for nearly as many errors (12) as runs (13) in Game 2, and none of the runs scored by either team were earned.

Oak Grove built a 4-1 lead after 3 1/2 innings with the help of four VHS errors and RBI doubles from Zack Harrington and Cullen Tatum. Vicksburg rallied in the bottom of the fourth, though, to take the lead.

Tyler Wells started the four-run rally with a triple to right center. He rounded third, and scored when Oak Grove pitcher Ryan Norton threw wild to the plate.

Later in the inning, the Gators had runners at first and second with two outs when Eric Coleman bounced an RBI single up the middle to cut it to 4-3.

Steven Price followed with a grounder to third that was thrown away by Harrington. The error allowed two runs to score and gave Vicksburg a 5-4 lead.

The lead was short-lived, however.

Norton reached on an error to lead off the fifth, then stole second after he had been picked off by Stanton Price. He later scored on a fielder’s choice by Kyle Lee to tie the game at 5-5.

Tatum followed Lee with a grounder to second that was bobbled, then thrown away by Vicksburg’s Coleman. Lee scored from first, and only a stubbed toe kept Tatum from advancing past first. It didn’t matter, though. Rod Shows followed with an RBI triple to center to bring in Tatum and put Oak Grove ahead 7-5.

“It’s hard to bounce back, knowing that those runs shouldn’t be up on the board. It’s just tough to come back mentally,” said Steven Price, also the losing pitcher in Game 1.

Oak Grove added one more unearned run in the seventh, but Vicksburg threatened in its half of the final inning.

Gerald Mims drew a leadoff walk, and Stanton Price reached on a dropped fly ball to put runners at first and second with one out. Norton then buckled down, mowing down the next two batters for the last of his 14 strikeouts and ending the game.

Given the way both teams played, veteran Oak Grove coach Harry Breland said he was glad the series ended there rather than going to a decisive third game.

“I really am,” he said with a chuckle. “We need to get back to work and work on our defense tomorrow. We gave them off last (Saturday) and we were going to give them off this (Saturday), but the way we played we ain’t giving nobody off.”