Person head baseball coach Steve Evans was not a happy individual after watching his team suffer an ugly 10-1 loss to the East Chapel Hill Wildcats in Piedmont Athletic Conference play Tuesday at Rocket Park.

It was undoubtedly the poorest performance by the Rockets so far this season. They managed just four hits off ECH off-speed specialist Robert Moore.

They also committed a whopping eight errors, and gave up five unearned runs to fall out of the ranks of the unbeaten with a resounding thud.

It was a long way from the type of ball Person had been playing this season. But perhaps the Rockets were due for a bad outing.

The visibly upset coach didn’t see it that way, however.

“The wheels just fell off today,” said Evans, who placed much of the blame on himself. “We didn’t execute offensively, we didn’t execute defensively. We didn’t come out prepared to play. It’s my job as the coach to prepare the team and obviously I didn’t do a good enough job of that. I take full responsibility for this loss.”

Even with the defeat, the Rockets still sit at 6-1 overall (2-1 in the conference), and were coming off a stretch of six wins where the pitching had been excellent, sporting a team ERA of 1.66.

Those numbers did take a significant hit on Tuesday, as the Wildcats reached Person starter Dylan Dickens, who took the loss, for six runs (four earned) through the opening three frames.

The Rocket freshman, now 2-1 on the season, hadn’t pitched in almost two weeks, since his near no-hit effort against South Granville.

Of course the shaky play in the field didn’t help either.

“We just didn’t make the plays. That was the whole story of this game,” said Evans. “Clearly we hadn’t worked hard enough on the things that we needed to in order to win this ball game.”

For the Wildcats, Moore was not spectacular but he was effective. The lefty fanned just three hitters and gave up three walks. But he had Person hitters off balance all day, and his teammates played good defense behind him.

The Rockets used three pitchers in the game.

Chris Morgan, coming off his five-inning no-hitter against Southern Durham last Friday, replaced Dickens in the fourth and went three innings.

Two runs scored off Morgan in the sixth, but most of it was not of his making, as his teammates committed three errors behind him. ECH’s only hit of the inning was a bunt single.

Brandon Wrenn closed it out for the Rockets in the seventh. He was reached for two more runs on three hits.

Person’s lone run came on a sacrifice fly by Shawn Whitt that scored Trey Davis in the second inning.

Ricky Crabtree finished with two hits, and Davis and Cody Ellis had hits as well for the Rockets.

On the other side, the Wildcats got a 3-for-5 effort and an RBI from Brett Forcini, and two doubles from Ethan Kyserling. The Wildcats had nine hits in all.

Person returns to conference action on Thursday with a 6 p.m. game at Northern Durham, and then plays an early afternoon non-conference tilt at South Granville on Friday, a scheduled 1 p.m. start.