There were a lot of reasons Porters Chapel’s season ended with an 11-9 loss to Benton Academy on Thursday night.

A lack of timely hitting, the five errors the Eagles committed and the three runners they had thrown out on the basepaths.

It’s the controversy at the end, though, that people will remember most.

PCA’s Judd Mims had an apparent RBI single in the bottom of the seventh inning called foul by the first base umpire, then flew out to left to end the deciding Game 3 of the second-round Academy-A playoff series.

Benton (16-6) won the series 2-1 and handed PCA (21-7) its earliest playoff exit since 2002, when it lost to Amite in the second round. PCA, which loses only one senior starter, had reached the state finals each of the last two seasons.

“You work all year to get to a state championship and then you don’t get there, it feels bad,” said PCA shortstop Michael Busby, who was 3-for-3 with a homer, double and three RBIs. “We’ve got to live with this all offseason. We’ll be ready for them next year, though … we’ll be back here in this same situation next year.”

Benton scored three times in top of the sixth to take an 11-8 lead, but PCA rallied in the last half of the seventh.

The Eagles loaded the bases with one out, scoring a run on a two-out error to draw within 11-9 and bring up Mims. The second baseman pounded a two-strike pitch into the dirt in front of home plate and beat the throw to first, bringing in another run.

The umpire ruled the ball had hit Mims, turning the single into a foul ball. PCA coach Randy Wright appealed to all three umpires and lost, and Mims hit a fly out to left on the next pitch to end the game.

“I didn’t think it hit him, but I also thought he was out when he hit the bag,” said Benton pitcher Stuart Morgan, who threw well over 100 pitches in Game 2 on Wednesday and came on in relief in Game 3 to earn the save. “It was a touch-and-go call. It was real close.”

The finish brought a fittingly frantic end to a wild game.

Benton scored six runs with two outs in the second inning to open a big lead, and had an 8-2 advantage before the Eagles rallied to tie the game in the fifth.

Brady Towne led off with a solo homer and the next five batters reached base for the Eagles. Busby’s two-run double, an RBI double by Moose Carney, and an RBI single by Mims sparked the rally, before Hayden Hales tied the game at 8-8 with an RBI groundout.

The Eagles left runners on second and third, though, something they had done all series long. In the three games, they stranded 12 runners in scoring position. Each game in the series was decided by two runs.

Benton touched an already depleted Eagle pitching staff for three runs in the sixth thanks to an error, two walks and a hit batter as the Raiders took an 11-8 lead.

“Our errors, the people we left on, it’s going to come back to haunt us a lot,” Mims said. “It’s just stupid mental mistakes that we make. That just killed us in the series.”