NATCHEZ — The Natchez 11-year-old Dixie Youth All-Star team may have finished runner-up in their district, but coach Jeff Webb feels like his team can win the South State tournament, which begins Friday in Hattiesburg.

“I feel like we can play with anybody over there,” Webb said. “There’s no reason we can’t win the whole thing.”

Natchez won the District 6 Sub-District tournament, but lost to McComb in two games in the district championship series.

However, Natchez could have won both games against the defending World Series champion.

They were tied 1-1 in the fifth inning of Game 1 before falling 4-1, and led the second game 3-0 before falling 7-3.

“McComb is the defending World Series champion, and our kids saw that we played very well against them,” Webb said. “We realize we were just that close to beating them. There’s no reason we couldn’t have won either of those two games.”

Natchez begins play in the nine-team, double elimination tournament at 4 p.m. Friday, when they take on Petal.

Petal won the 10-year-old South State tourney last year.

“Petal won this tournament last year, with McComb as the runner up,” Webb said. “So we’re going to get a good test right off the bat. If we can beat Petal, we’ll get a bye Saturday and probably play McComb on Sunday, so we’ll find out how good we are very early.”

The top two teams in the South State tournament advance to the State Tournament, which is a four-team round-robin tournament to determine a state champion.

There is no Dixie Youth World Series for the 11-year-old age group, so state champion is the highest honor the Natchez team can achieve.

But Webb knows that his team’s bats have to come around if they want to advance to the state tourney.

“We’ve got to hit the ball like we did in the sub-district tournament,” Webb said. “Against McComb, our bats cooled off. If our pitchers can throw strikes, and we hit the ball like we did in the sub-district tournament, I really think we can run the table over there.”