HIGHLAND, Kansas — A bang-bang play at first base in the ninth inning of Tuesday's game between the Cloud County Community College baseball team and Highland Community College was the difference between joy and disappointed for the T-Birds in their 8-7 loss to the Scotties.

With two outs, runners at second and third, Cloud County freshman Jake Steinbring induced a groundball to short stop that redshirt freshman Aidan Huggins scooped and threw over to first base for what the T-Birds thought was the final out of the ballgame.

Unfortunately for Cloud County, Highland's Dalton Burt was called safe for a game-tying RBI infield single to bring the Scotties even at 7-7. One batter later, Tanner Williams delivered a walk-off RBI single.

It was a bitter end to what overall had been a positive day on the diamond for the T-Birds following a disappointing loss on Monday to No. 4 ranked Cowley.

"We really needed to play well coming off on Monday's loss and I thought we did for the most part," said Cloud County head coach, Eric Gilliland. "We outhit them, we played better defense and outpitched them most of the day. But it was just kind of a weird game and the breaks didn't go our way. We ended up dropping a tough one."

Tuesday's game was a mid-week game for both squads as each team played Monday. And with the conference opener against Garden City scheduled for Thursday, the T-Birds and Scotties were each rotating in a lot of arms — 10 total pitchers used between the two teams — to get in-game work.

Cloud County built an early 6-2 lead through the first four innings, but the T-Birds offense slowed down from that point and were unable to add on as they score just one more run in the seventh inning the rest of the way.

Highland chipped away with two runs in the sixth and two in the seventh to grab the momentum and put the pressure on Cloud County's young bullpen staff.

"We got ahead and played really well the first 4-5 innings then kind of went cruise control mode a little bit," Gilliland said. "We didn't capitalize on some opportunities to put Highland away, then combined with some bad innings from the bullpen, found ourselves in a dogfight in the late innings with guys who really haven't been in those positions on the mound."

Offensively, sophomore outfielder Ryan Simons finished 2-for-5 at the leadoff spot, while fellow sophomores Tauren Langley and Erik Sabrowski each added two hits on Tuesday, as well. Sabrowski added two runs driven in. Langley and sophomore Ryan Krolikowski also delivered RBI hits for the T-Birds.

Cloud County will now prepare for its first four-game, home-road conference series of the season, starting with a doubleheader on Thursday in Garden City against a Broncbusters team that is 11-6 overall on the young season.

"The thing we have to realize is we have 46 games to played. We've scuffled here the last 48 hours, but it doesn't change that we feel we have the chance to still be pretty solid," Gilliland said. "The conference season is a new beginning in some ways and I think we're capable, but we need to continue to clean up some areas."

First pitch for Game One on Thursday is scheduled for 1 p.m.