Lassiter's march through the Class AAAAA state baseball postseason is reminiscent of its streak during the regular season when the Trojans won 12 straight games from March 27 to April 26 and claimed the No. 2 seed out of Region 6AAAAA. They both relied on honest discussion and a willingness to examine what needed to happen in order for the team to be successful.

In other words, it took a couple of meetings for Lassiter to turn things around.

The Trojans began the 2010 campaign with four victories in their first five games, but stumbled along the way after that, losing five of the next seven. Following an 8-6 loss to Alpharetta and a 2-1 setback to Kell in back-to-back region games, Lassiter found itself at 6-6 overall and 2-3 in the region standings.

That had to change, and the players as well as the coaching staff knew it.

"We got beat by Kell, and we went back and the team talked a little bit," said Lassiter coach Scott Kelly, who is in his first season as coach of the Trojans (24-8). "We just didn't panic. We didn't need to yet. There were still a lot of games to be played and we knew that we could still compete and that we were okay."

The players saw it the same way too, including senior Brandon Stephens, who has helped lead this team this season from the mound as well as behind the plate.

"We called a players' only meeting in the locker room," he said. "Each player talked about what he could do to better the team and to help the team. We went out (that next game against East Jessamine, Ky.) and the streak just started. This was the day after the Kell loss."

Since that initial meeting, the Lassiter bats produced runs by the bunches and the pitching, which hadn't fully developed yet, also began to come around.

"A lot of people forget we lost 85 percent of our innings from last year off the pitching staff," said Kelly, as Lassiter finished 22-9 overall and lost to Brookwood in the second round of the state playoffs. "We had only 24 innings pitched coming back from last year's team."

"A lot of our (slow start) had to do with our pitchers who just had to get some confidence and innings under their belt to where we could start seeing some success. We still swung the bats all right and kept doing what we were doing. We knew our pitching staff would finally come around."

Weather also played a role in Lassiter's slow start. The consistent inclement weather in February forced the Trojans to adjust their practice routines and kept those young arms from learning properly.

"The weather was bad," Kelly said. "We were losing practice time to where we couldn't get on the field, get some stuff done and work on the things that we always work on everyday at practice. When the weather changed, so did our results."

The change seemed to coincide with the Kell loss. Afterwards, and after the team talk, Lassiter outscored opponents 36-21 over its next five games and steadily moved up in the region standings.

"We just started hitting and cruised along," Stephens said. "We weren't surprised with the streak. I think that even though we weren't playing great, we knew we could do it. We were just living up to what we expected to be doing."

Which was winning. The Trojans beat several Region 6AAAAA opponents during the 12-game win streak, including sweeps of Walton and Wheeler. But, everything derailed following a 10-0 loss to region leader Milton and an 8-5 setback at Pope that would have kept Lassiter in the hunt for the region championship and a No. 1 seed in the postseason.

"We knew what the Pope game meant," Kelly said. "If we win that game, we had a chance to win the region. That was one of our goals going into the season. When we lost that game, the disappointment was that we missed on one of our goals.

"The game ended and we went back to work. We got over the loss and knew we could still salvage some of our goals that we set out to obtain at the beginning of the year."

The back-to-back losses to Milton and Pope led to another team meeting where the team rededicated their efforts to a strong postseason run.

"(The Pope game) loss was disappointing," Stephens said. "We had just lost two games in a row and a shot at the region championship. We talked about it again and just had to go out there and play loose and not let those two losses bother us. Just to have fun and play baseball."

Since that second meeting, Lassiter has been on a tear sweeping past South Forsyth, former No. 1 Parkview and Luella in each of the first three playoff series. With their best-of-three semifinal matchup at home against Redan scheduled for Monday, the Trojans are hoping their good momentum can continue.

"Anytime you get this far, you want to think you have a chance, but you're going to have to play good baseball," Kelly said. "The other dugout is thinking the same thing.

"It's nothing I did to turn this team around. These kids have stayed together and worked a team. We have a lot of seniors and they brought them together and took control and it's helped us to this point. Having 11 seniors on the team is a plus sometimes."