He worked a couple of fastballs in but the entire time he was thinking about his slider. "I just used those to set up the slider," Mobley said. "I just wanted to see if I could catch him looking inside again."

Mobley did and Wilson, the potential game-winning run, struck out with two runners on base in the top of the ninth, sending Carolina to the Southern League Championship Series with a 4-2 win to cap a three-game best-of-five series sweep.

It was a fitting finish to a series dominated by Carolina's bullpen, which worked 12 innings without allowing a run in the series.

That trend is also a perfect starting off point for the Southern League Championship Series against Southern Division champ Mississippi, which begins Monday night at Five County Stadium and continues into the weekend.

The Braves relied heavily on their starting pitching to win a divisional series where they rolled off a sweep of Birmingham despite scoring just seven runs in three games. But, like the Mudcats, pitching told the tale of Mississippi's sweep.

The Braves starting pitchers in the series - Kris Medlen, Thomas Hanson and Todd Redmond - all worked seven or more innings in their starts, didn't allow a walk and struck out a total of 30 Barons' batters in 29 innings of work.

"The thing with Mississippi all year has been their pitching," said Mudcats' all-star outfielder and Benson native John Raynor. "We're going to see some great arms but one of our strengths all season as well has been our pitching so we don't feel like we're at a disadvantage."

Mississippi's bullpen - in the few opportunities it got - was near-perfect as well, not allowing a run. The M-Braves' ERA for the series was a miniscule 0.391.

Carolina, meanwhile, gave up a single earned run a game in their divisional series. The Mudcats used seven different relievers - Mobley, Jarrett Santos, Ryan Tucker, Jeff Gogal, Jesus Delgado and Timothy Wood - and got the same result every time, which impressed Mobley all the more.

"The way it's carried over [into the playoffs] is great," Mobley said. "Sometime you get a couple of guys who have good outings but then one guy might have a bad inning. That didn't happen in this series.

"Everybody did their job."

Mudcats' manager Matt Raleigh just saw the pen's work in the series as something he expected.

"I've said all along, this is the best bullpen in the league and they showed it," he said. "Tuck [Tucker] and Mobley gave us great outings tonight. Gogal, Delgado, all of those guys came through."

On the other side of the baseball worksheet, Carolina's offense did show some added pop and punch against the Diamond Jaxx. The Mudcats scored 20 runs in the Northern Division Championship Series.

Now, the Mudcats will go for one final five-game series victory (the majority of Southern League series during the regular-season are five games) to cap the 2008 season.

"We have to just go in there with the same approach we have in every series," Raynor said. "Our goal is to win the series, just like it's been every time we've seen another team this season."

This series, however, has a championship ring waiting for winner.