Manhattan ? If things go right today for Lawrence High’s baseball team, the Lions would face not one future Division One pitcher, but two.

“Our kids are really excited about exactly that possibility. Now is the time for us to prove ourselves,” said LHS coach Brad Stoll, whose 8-11 squad will take on Washburn Rural (9-11) at 2 p.m. in a Class 6A sub-state game at Wayne Norvell Field in Manhattan.

First up for the fifth-seeded Lions will be Rural’s Aaron Crow, a 6-foot-3, 190-pound right-hander who has signed with Missouri.

If Lawrence High can win its first game, the Lions likely would see top-seeded Manhattan’s Justin Murray, a Kansas State signee, in the sub-state championship game at 7 p.m. The Indians, the top team in the state, play host to Junction City (1-19) in this afternoon’s second game.

“I know that both those guys are really top-notch pitchers, but I think our kids are pretty pumped up about the possibility of facing both,” Stoll said. “We want to put pressure on whoever we play and really make things uncomfortable for them since we’re going in as the underdogs.”

If the Lions can string together two victories today, they not only would qualify for next weekend’s state tournament, but also wouldn’t have to travel far to get there; the Class 6A state site is Kansas University’s Hoglund Ballpark.

“We’ve talked at practice that nothing would be sweeter than playing the state tournament in our own back yard, but obviously first things first,” Stoll said. “Still, if somehow both Lawrence High and Free State could be playing next weekend in front of a packed stadium, that would be really cool for baseball fans in this town.”

But Stoll certainly said Rural, the No. 4 seed, will pose a stiff challenge — even if the Junior Blues have had some of the same defensive deficiencies that plagued the Lions this season.

“Crow has got a really good arm — I think he two-hit Topeka Seaman — but they lost 1-0 because Rural made seven errors behind him,” Stoll said. “But I think both teams’ records are really deceiving. I know that we’re certainly a different team than a month ago.”

Indeed the Lions, which endured a four-game skid where they committed at least five errors a game, definitely have turned the page defensively.

Lawrence High has gone 3-1 since the last week in April, and was competitive in its lone loss again Olathe East, a 9-6 setback. Last weekend the Lions also were strong in three innings of action against in-state rival Free State, even though they trailed 5-4 when the game was canceled because of rain.

“We’re a lot more advanced than we were even a month ago,” LHS senior pitcher David Freeman said. “We’ve cleaned up a lot of the small things, on and off the field. We have a lot of confidence right now, and we’re definitely not even worried about what happened in the past.

“We knew it was going to be a little rough this year from the beginning, but the only thing we can afford to worry about today is what we can control, and right now we’re still in control of our season.”