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Lancer baseball came up just short again in its second home game of the season, losing 4-3 to Victor Valley College on Feb. 9 at Jackie Robinson Memorial Field.

Freshman starting pitcher Tim Shiba pitched the entire game for the Lancers, but the team couldn’t give him enough run support on offense to get the win against the Rams.

“You just can’t say enough about a guy who now twice has gone out and thrown a complete gem,” said Head Coach Evan O’Meara. “He executed, got batters off-balance and elicited ground balls.”

PCC managed to tally nine hits on the day. However, base running and leaving runners stranded on base were both troublesome for the Lancers, who had multiple runners thrown out stealing or trying to advance.

“I was not unhappy with the way we swung the bats today, but we need to work on execution once we have runners on base,” said Coach O’Meara. “We are going to spend a lot of time working on base running because we were sloppy.”

The Lancers, down 3-0 after VVC scored twice in the top of the fourth inning, managed to score all three of their runs for the day in the bottom of the fourth inning. Sophomore center fielder Charles Smith crushed a double into left-center field, scoring two runs on the play to tie the game up at 3-3.

“That double really boosted us up because we were down by two,” said Smith. “I wanted to get some runs on the board to pick up my pitcher, but we really need to finish.”

Adding to what Smith said, sophomore third baseman David Halstead reiterated it on the importance of supporting the pitcher with offense and being able to finish games strongly.

“We can’t have Timmy (Shiba) pitch a great game and have us not put up runs,” said Halstead. “We need to get enough of a cushion for our pitcher to feel comfortable out there.”

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