On Monday night the Lake Norman Copperheads dug themselves a hole with their defense that the offense couldn’t climb out of. Four errors were made by Lake Norman, which set up four Tennessee Tornado unearned runs. It was enough for the Tornado as they added five more runs, finishing with a 9-5 victory over the Copperheads on Monday night.

“I think we gave it away. Early on we made those errors.” Head Coach Derek Shoe said after the game. “Tennessee is too good to have unearned runs against. You give them extra outs and they’ll make you pay for it and that’s what they did tonight.”

Starter Malcolm Bradley scattered six hits in his four innings of work, but behind him the defense made two errors behind him setting up Tennessee for their five runs in the first four innings.

The Tornado took the lead in the second with two runs after Bradley hit catcher Brandon Miller to lead off the inning. Fabian Harper each added singles to score one run and move Harper to third. Harper then came in to score on a sacrifice fly by Dom Spadafora.

In the bottom half of the inning the Copperheads would strike back, cutting the lead to one on a perfectly dropped sacrifice bunt by outfielder Shane Brown. The 2-1 deficit marked the closest Lake Norman would get though for the rest of the game.

Tennessee scored three in the third, three in the eighth and added an insurance run in the top of the night to keep Lake Norman at an arm’s length away for the entire game.  Along with Brown, Jerod Faggart, Landon Adams each added singles while Nick Verhein hit his fourth double of the season to give the Copperheads their only hits of the game.

Also at the plate Tarron Robinson saw his first action in a Copperhead uniform, earning a walk in his only plate appearance.  Robinson just finished up his freshman season with the University of North Carolina, as they were eliminated in the College World Series by Arizona State just under a week ago.

The lone bright spot for the Copperheads was reliever Patrick Sherrill who pitched three scoreless innings after being signed by the team late last week.

“He throws strikes and that’s the big thing we’ve really needed out of the bullpen. We’ve been a little shaky with that so I think he’ll really help solidify that. He may even end up being our fifth starter,” Coach Shoe said of Sherrill.

With the loss Lake Norman falls to 0-2 vs. the Tornado this season.