The Alabama Independent School Association’s Class AAA championship series at Paterson Field on Wednesday had a flair for late-inning drama.

Glenwood broke a 1-1 tie in the sixth inning with a squeeze bunt to win the first game 4-1, only to watch Lee-Scott walk off a nine-inning thriller with a Sam Jackson single in a 5-4 victory in the nightcap.

The two teams will decide the AAA state title with a third game in the best-of-three series on Thursday at 11 a.m.

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“That’s what state championship series are supposed to be like,” Glenwood coach Tim Fanning said. “You’ve just got to give Lee-Scott credit. They took advantage of their opportunities in the second game and we didn’t. We left a lot of guys out there.

“There were a lot of really good defensive plays in the game on both sides. It was high-level pitching. You’ve just got to get big two-out hits to win games. That’s why they don’t give those trophies away. They’re hard to win.”

Glenwood (35-8) stranded eight players on the bases in the fourth, fifth and seventh innings, but did push across a run in the seventh with the help of a Lee-Scott error to force extra innings.

Lee-Scott (37-9) owned a 3-1 lead but left the bases loaded in the fifth as well, finally coming up with a pair of runs in the ninth.

“I think you expect that in a series like this with Glenwood being such a big rival,” first-year Lee-Scott coach Jarrod Cook said. “We didn’t always handle it the right way. But we just did enough. And we haven’t been here, so you can see the tension mounting. But like I just told them, we’ve been here two games now, so we know what to expect. And we’ve got to be better with runners in scoring position.”

After Carter Judah’s RBI single gave Glenwood a one-run lead in the top of the ninth, Barrett Cook got the Warriors started with a pinch-hit single. A walk to Garrett West followed by Ethan Hardee’s bunt that loaded the bases with no outs set the stage for Jackson’s single to the left side of the infield that a diving Jaxson Griggs at shortstop deflected but couldn’t field.

“We feel like we’ve got the momentum going into Game 3, but we know what we’re going to get from those guys,” Cook said. “It’s about slowing the game down for us, having a slow heart beat, and executing.”

Fanning will be aiming for his program’s 23rd state title on Thursday and back-to-back titles after beating Macon East in the AAA finals last year.

“I would say the team with the most experience, you would think it would favor them,” Fanning said. “We have experience as a program but this team doesn’t have very much experience at all. We only return one position player (Griggs) that was a starter from last year.”