After starting pitcher Josh Mingura pitched a complete game last time out, he struggled to get out of the sixth inning and the defense did not do much to help.
The team lost to the Moorpark College Raiders 5-4 last Friday after the Warriors dropped both games against Santa Barbara City College; 7-4 and 4-0.
“We’re a young team and early on we caught a streak a little bit,” coach Nate Fernley said. “The last few games, we faced a couple of really good pitchers and we needed to execute, but we didn’t. We’re making progress.”
The next stop will be at home today at 2 p.m. vs. Long Beach City College, the second conference game of the season.
“They are kind of similar to what we are, as far as being really deep on the mound and they also have not been executing well on offense while having a really good defense,” Fernley said. “I think the game is going to come down to things like we were working on today like getting our cutoff man (not allowing any passed balls).”
Starting conference play, the team looks to improve and be in the championship hunt like last year when it reached the final four.
“We just need to execute more,” Jeff Dorman, outfielder, said. “We need to be able to score more when we have runners on scoring position.”
The team doesn’t always need to look for a hit with men on base, Fernley said.
“(We need to improve on) our situational hitting,” Fernley said. “A lot of times we don’t necessarily need to hit with for example a runner on third with less than two outs. A ground ball to the shortstop is all it takes to score a run.”
Mingura will start today and Chris Vopinek is set to throw Saturday against LBCC.
“We gotta figure out how to play more as a team right now,” Andrew Pulido, pitcher, said. “Our last couple of games, we made a few mistakes on offense and defense, but you get that from a young team and we’ll learn from our mistakes and move on.”