South Johnston drops Princeton

By Andrew Stevens
Published in Sports on March 13, 2010 11:18 PM

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PRINCETON -- With eight seniors returning to a team that had high hopes this season, this isn't the start Bruce Proctor had in mind.

The Princeton head coach watched his team suffer a lopsided loss to South Johnston for the second time this week, a 15-2, six-inning setback on Friday afternoon.,

"That's the whole reason I went after this kind of schedule is because I knew we were going to have this many seniors," said Proctor. "It's their team and you're going to win or lose with your seniors, and ownership would be a great way of describing it."

The Trojans erupted for eight runs on six hits and a pair of Bulldogs' errors in the second inning.

South Johnston tacked on a run in the third and pushed across six in the top of the sixth. Jesse Holmes led the Trojans with three hits. South Johnston tallied 14 hits on the day.

"You learn more by losing than you do winning and today we learned a lot," said Proctor. "It's early and we've got some young guys that we're rolling out there on the mound. We've played some good teams, but that's the way you get better in my mind is by playing good teams.

"This game is built around failure and you've got to be able to handle failure, so hopefully it's not only a life lesson, but it's a lesson of how to approach this game."

Luke Mitchell's RBI single in the home half of the fourth and his RBI groundout in the sixth accounted for all of Princeton's scoring. Tyler Daniels, Dylan Myers and Matt Evans also had hits.

The Bulldogs (0-4 overall) still have dates with West Johnston, Wilson Fike, Charles B. Aycock and Smithfield-Selma before beginning Carolina 1-A Conference play.

"We've still got a real tough non-conference schedule left," said Proctor. "We've got some tough, tough non-conference games left. It's something to learn from, there's no question."

Princeton entertains West Johnston on Tuesday.