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Natchez High School struggled to play good defense, and pitch the ball in their 11-1 loss to Warren Central Monday night, head coach Dan Smith said.

He said the team struggled to find the strike zone or catch the ball in their defeat. Bulldogs committed three errors and issued 11 walks while giving up seven hits in the game.

“Sometimes, you don’t have it that night,” Smith said. “I teach pitching, defense and hitting. If you can get two out of three most of the time, you are going to win. We didn’t get but one out of three.”

Warren Central had four or five runs in the first couple of innings without a hit, he said. He would rather a poor performance come now than in the playoffs, he said. He said the reason Natchez has two games left against Crystal Springs and Bogue Chitto is to get playoff-ready.

Warren Central is a good team, he said. Playing at their stadium simulated a playoff atmosphere because they had a large crowd, he said. After the game, he said he told his team they would win the game if they had played defense and thrown strikes.

“There wasn’t anything to panic about,” Smith said. “Anything we didn’t do, we did it before. You have to get up and try it again. We didn’t give up last night. We kept fighting to the end.”

He said his team knew they could have played better against Warren Central. He said once a team knows they can do better; it is a win within itself for him as a coach.

Natchez travels to Bogue Chitto on Thursday and hopes to take out their loss on the Bobcats, he said.

“There is one thing about baseball. I laugh all the time. It ain’t like football,” Smith said. “If you lose in football, you still have to wait five more days before you can play again. In baseball, you can wait two days, and we are playing again.”