DOUGLAS — The Cochise College baseball team dropped the opener of its best-of-three NJCAA Region I Championship series to South Mountain on Thursday, 12-3.
Starting pitcher Jacob Potts took the loss, going 5 1/3 innings and giving up seven runs, including a five-run third inning that unraveled after a leadoff Cochise error.
“We had a chance to minimize the inning,” Cochise head coach Todd Inglehart told the Sierra Vista Herald. “At this stage, there’s no way we can win a ball game like that, giving away five runs in an inning. We have enough trouble putting away crooked numbers.”
Cochise scored one in the bottom of the fifth thanks to an RBI double by Tagg Duce that brought in Austin Nelson. South Mountain scored two more in the sixth, another in the eighth and four in the ninth, while an eighth-inning rally attempt by the Apaches ended with two runs.
The series continues today with game two at 2 p.m. on the Douglas Campus. If the Apaches win, game three starts at noon Saturday. Admission to each game is $5 for adults, $3 for students and free for kids under 12.
“Sometimes you’ve got to put things in perspective and think in the moment,” Inglehart told the Herald. “We just have to take care of the things we didn’t do well today. We need to get better at bats with guys in scoring position.”