Struggling again to make routine plays, the Tigers committed seven errors, falling 8-0 against Greenbrier East at Hunnicutt Field Wednesday night.
Those failures played into the hands of East which kept the pressure on Princeton all night by putting the ball in play 25 times.
For half of the night it felt like the Tigers might hold as East stranded nine runners through the first four innings and pushed across just two runs but the dam broke and the Spartans started finding the gaps for extra-base hits.
“It’s just self discipline and not trying to do too much,” East head coach Corey Mann said. “We’ve done a pretty good job all year of driving our runners in. We just kind of had that game tonight where we get runners in scoring position, runners on and it just seemed like it misfired a little bit. Probably pressing a little bit at the plate, but maturity, throughout the game, staying focused and keep plugging away at it, and we finally broke through.”
While Princeton’s defense struggled to handle the pressure East applied, its offense fared little better notching just two hits and standing nine runners on base. It allowed East to get away with walking six total batters.
“In that fifth and sixth inning, we had opportunities,” Princeton head coach Brandon Dunford said. “We had the bases loaded in the bottom of the fifth, and had second and third in the bottom of the six. I thought that would’ve gave us an opportunity to get, maybe, some momentum, by banging out a couple runs.
“We’re just doing a really poor job on situational hitting. We, as a team, we watch too many first pitch strikes, and we don’t look like we’re being aggressive at the plate, looking for a hit which then puts us behind in the count and it looks like from there, we’re always in that battling mindset with the fear of striking out instead of being an aggressive hitter where we’re going for for a hit. So I think when it comes to our hitting struggles, it’s all about approach.”
Princeton flirted with danger early but the bright spot of the night, the Tigers’ pitching, held steady, stranding a pair of Spartans in scoring position in the first inning and escaping a bases-loaded jam by yielding just one run on an error on a ground ball hit by Zion Detko in the second.
Deegan Walters, who got the start for the Tigers, worked out of another bases-loaded jam in the third but the defensive failures behind him loomed large in fourth where the Tigers committed three errors.
They culminated in allowing Detko to cross the plate for East, extending the lead to 2-0.
“It seems like our pitchers are doing everything in their power to hit the strike zone,” A frustrated Dunford said. “We’re telling our pitchers, ‘Hey, pitch to the bottom, utilize your defense,’ and unfortunately, in the last few games what we are seeing is that our defense is really not stepping up and they’re failing at crucial times. Drops, missing ground balls. Making bad throws, not catching pop ups. It’s the basics and the fundamentals that’s killing this team at right now.”
East largely took the pressure off Princeton’s defense in the fifth by simply hitting the ball where Princeton wasn’t positioned.
Detko started with a two-run, two-out double in the fifth and scored when Nelson Lynch followed with a triple. A wild pitch allowed Lynch to scurry home, Effectively putting the game away. For good measure the aforementioned duo added a run each in the seventh to cap the scoring.
The Tigers threatened in sixth and seventh innings but Eli Green and Brady May, pitching in relief for Layne Lambert, closed the door.
“I think our guys did a did a good job of keeping them at bay all night,” Mann said. “We worked too deep in counts for my liking, but was able to overcome that. I think you just have games like that where like, it’s kind of slow playing and things aren’t quite click and right and anytime you can keep focused and end up winning and and overall having a a good night with holding them to the two hits, you can’t you can’t complain about that.”
Detko led the Spartans with two hits and an RBI while Lynch was good for a pair of hits as well. Lambert secured the win, striking out eight batters across four innings of work.
Braydon Dalton collected both of Princeton’s hits in the loss.
