GREENSBORO-It was a true spring day on Tuesday afternoon at War Memorial Stadium, but the North Carolina A&T offense struggled to warm up with the weather in its non-conference baseball contest against the High Point Panthers.

The Aggies fell to the Panthers by a 9-2 final, in which they left nine runners stranded. 

After falling behind early, the Aggies were able to pull themselves within a run of the Panthers. The Aggies even made it a save situation for High Point reliever Joe Goodman  in the seventh inning by bringing the tying run to the on-deck circle, but A&T left four runners stranded across the final three innings of the contest.

"We keep battling, we keep playing hard.  That's what we did--we played hard until we made the last out," said A&T head coach Joel Sanchez.  "We'll come back another day, which is tomorrow against Elon.  Hopefully things will start falling our way."

Redshirt junior Ruben Torrellas picked up the loss, his second, allowing six runs (five earned) on eight hits in five innings.  Freshman right-hander Jamal Clark tossed three shutout innings before allowing three runs in the top of the ninth. 

"It was another good, tight game," said Sanchez. "That's all we're asking of our pitchers in every game.  That was a good team we just played.  We've played good quality teams in the midweek games.  We can't afford to make mistakes against some of these teams.  They're too good.   They were a solid defensive team and offensively they had a good approach, and they made us work." 

Offensively for the Aggies, freshman designated hitter Brandon Wilkerson and shortstop Michael Radford led the team with two hits apiece.  Radford was making his first start of the year at shortstop, instead of his usual spot at the third base, because sophomore Luke Tendler was out sick.   Radford performed well at the "6" spot, and made seven assists.  Taking his starting spot at third was senior Mark Nales, who snapped an 0-for-19 hitless streak with a double in the sixth inning.   The Aggies collected eight hits to High Point's 11 in the contest.

The Panthers scored three runs quickly to take a 3-0 lead after two frames.   HPU shortstop Willie Medina scored the first run of the game.  After doubling to left center, he stole third while pitcher Ryan Retz was at-bat.  A&T catcher Stefan Jordan threw the ball to Nales to try to catch Medina stealing, but his throw went wild, and Medina scored on the error.  A pair of RBI singles in the second gave the Panthers a three-run advantage.

"Ruben struggled a little bit.  He was up in the zone a little bit," Sanchez said.  "In the first two innings, he was up and they hit him around a little bit.   Then he settled down and gave us another quality outing, another 5.0 innings.  That's been the case with these teams, we've battled hard."

Sanchez added that Torrellas was battling illness himself on Tuesday. 

"In the second and third inning, he was nauseous.  He was almost throwing up in the dugout. He struggled a little bit with that, but he kept pitching," he said. 

But the Aggies answered, and cut it to a 3-2 game in the bottom of the third.  With two on and one out, left fielder Andre McKoy singled to score senior Carvell Copeland.  An RBI single by senior Marquis Riley allowed Radford to score from second. 

Torrellas battled against his nausea and came out to pitch in the fourth and fifth frames.  He gave up two runs on an RBI double to Medina and a sacrifice fly by Sal Pezzino in the fourth.  High Point pulled ahead 6-2  in the fifth on an RBI single by catcher Spencer Angelis. 

The Aggies worked to push a few more runs across in the seventh inning.  Wilkerson singled over the head of HPU starter Retz, and took second as Radford singled up the middle.  With two on and one out, the Panthers called on Goodman to replace Retz on the mound, as Retz took over as the DH.  With two on and the tying run in the on-deck circle, McKoy stepped up to the plate.  McKoy hit into a 6-4-3 double play to end the inning.

After holding High Point to just one hit across the sixth, seventh and eighth innings, Clark ran into a little trouble in the ninth as the Panthers scored three times.   

The Aggies will take on Elon at 3 p.m., on Wednesday at War Memorial Stadium.