St. Andrews’ victory against Vicksburg came in an unkempt manner, and Gators’ coaches were audibly displeased with the team’s performance.

Vicksburg gave up only three runs, three hits and committed two errors through the first four innings of Saturday’s 20-0 blowout.

“I thought we played hard for four innings,” Vicksburg coach Derrick DeWald said. “We ran some guys out that hadn’t really pitched at all. I don’t think they pitched bad but definitely that one inning we just laid down.”

By the end of the fifth, St. Andrews scored six runs off four hits, but was unwillingly gearing up to more than double their runs of scored in the previous two innings.

The Saints scored 14 runs off three hits while Vicksburg committed eight errors doing the stretch.

“Prior to the sixth inning it was a pretty good ball game,” DeWald said. “We still have to find a way to score some runs, we’re still striking out way too much but with the young team we have right now it’s just a work in progress.”

DeWald said the bizarre turn of events came from the team losing focus.

“They just lost focus; eight errors. They were balls that were hit hard, we just lost focus.”

St. Andrew’s coach Mark Fanning said the game was much closer than the final score indicated, and overall his team left some opportunities on the bases early, pitched out of some things and didn’t have hitters execute well.

“Then you get to an inning like the last one and it seemed like we could do no wrong,” Fanning said. “We finally cashed in, got a littler separation in the score and everything started going our way.”

The biggest thing for St. Andrew’s in pulling out the win is they continued to play their brand of baseball.

“I think that was the biggest positive, we didn’t get down,” Fanning said. “We just stayed after it. We played defense well and our starting pitcher threw great.”

Despite the late-game mishaps, the Gators were able to keep the game at an even pace through the first half of the game.

At the top of the third, Vicksburg’s Latonio Brown walked Stephen Atkins and was the only Saints’ player to get on base. It earned a quick two outs from the Saints first at-bats and Chris Farrish finished the top of the inning catching a pop fly near the coach’s box.

Vicksburg had similar success in the top of the second.

After giving up a base hit to Ryan McCarty, shortstop DeWayne Sims then caught a pop fly out, which ignited a quick end to the top of the inning.

The Gators turned a doubleplay with Brown striking out a player, followed by the catcher rocketing the ball to third to tag out McCarty.

From here, however, DeWald said the Gators could only improve after the blowout loss, which will be put this to the test on Monday as they travel to Murrah.

DeWald said his team has to find a way to not hang their heads when things aren’t going in their favor.

“When you got a team that hasn’t played a lot of baseball from our standpoint; a victory today would’ve been going seven innings for us,” DeWald said. “You have to get to the seventh inning. I think small steps, small victories will help put some confidence in these guys.

“We have to make the routine plays, we have to cut the strikeouts down and we have to run the bases better than we did today. We’re not going to give up, we just have to overcome our obstacles, adversity, fight through it and get better.”