Landmark Christian enters the Class A state playoffs with plenty of superlatives to its credit, but Mark Huggins knows first-hand how the postseason marks a brand new ball game.

The Bowdon baseball coach entered the playoffs last year sporting a 20-3 record and hosting an Athens Christian ball club that had never won a state playoff game since entering the GHSA in 2001.

So the fact that the Eagles came out and swept the senior-dominant Red Devils on their home field made the upset all the more stunning.

And while that was a tough one to swallow for the Red Devil skipper, it proved to be a lesson for the returning players on that Bowdon squad, which are now focused on turning the tables against the War Eagles when Friday’s best-of-three series begins with a 4:30 p.m. doubleheader in Fairburn against the state runner-up from a season ago.

The if-game is slated for 2 p.m. on Saturday.

Of the 16 players on Landmark’s roster, 14 of them are juniors, with one senior and one sophomore.

“They had maybe three or four seniors on that team last year, and then they had a very heavy sophomore squad,” Huggins said. “So that’s a lot of juniors who are playing on a team that as of last year went to the state championship series. So it ain’t going to be a walk in the park by any stretch of the imagination.”

The War Eagles (16-7-1) finished in a tie for first with Holy Innocents’ in Region 5-A at 12-2, but lost the tie-breaker and dropped to the No. 2 seed.

Still, this is a squad ranked No. 10 in the state and one that has lost to just three Class A ball clubs all season, as the War Eagles dropped a pair of games to both Class AAAAA Chapel Hill and Class AAAA Sandy Creek, each of which qualified for the state tournament in their respective classifications.

And while Bowdon (13-9) certainly isn’t going to be favored in the first-round matchup, Huggins can use recent memory as motivation.

After all, it’s a new season now.

The War Eagles feature a pair of quality right-handers on the hill in lone senior Tanner Bryant and junior Jonathan Roberts.

“Both of those guys, I think they run it up there pretty good,” Huggins said. “I think they’ll try to challenge us with the fastball. And it’s going to be one of those things to see if we’re up to the challenge. We can try to take them out of their game plan with regard to that.”

And with exactly a week off in between games, timing will be key for the Red Devil hitters.

“Baseball players are so strange in that you go from playing sometimes three games in a week to almost an entire week off,” Huggins said. “One of the main things you want to try to do is keep your hitters’ timing. Anybody will tell you that hitting, half of it is timing. What we’ve been trying to do is really keep our hitters, keep them on time. Especially knowing that we’re going to face two guys who are going to be somewhere between 84-85 miles per hour throwing the fastball.”

Offensively, Huggins said the War Eagles’ top five hitters bring a solid mixture of things that can create havoc, with speed at the top of the order followed by big lumber behind him.

“I know their lead-off guy is a left-handed speedster,” Huggins said. “He tries to spray the baseball around. And then behind him he’s got a couple pretty heavy sticks that we’re going to have to be down in the zone against. Our pitchers are definitely not going to have any luxury of missing their spots.”

Bowdon ace Jason Jennings will obviously be one of Friday’s starters, with fellow senior Jonathan Cook looking like he’ll get the nod for the other contest.

“As of right now, we know we’ve got Jason. If he does what he’s capable of doing and we play defense and get a few timely hits, we should have an opportunity to win that game,” Huggins said. “Then we’ve got Jonathan Cook, another senior who’s pitched very well for us all year. I wouldn’t say he’s an overpowering pitcher, but he understands what he has to do.”

And as Friday approaches, Huggins realizes his team will be the underdog, but upsets are what the playoffs are all about -- something he’s wanting to be on the positive side of this time around.

“I’d like to think that we have a little momentum coming into the playoffs just because that last week we were able to get a couple must-wins, I guess you would call it,” Huggins said. “We had some guys step up and did that. Momentum is one thing, but I think some of that kind phases out to a certain degree just because it is an entire week off since we last played. So we’ll see.”