With a chance to upend the Piedmont Athletic Conference leading Riverside Pirates Tuesday night at Rocket Park, the Person baseball team fell too far behind and couldn’t catch up in a 6-3 defeat.

The loss was Person’s third straight in the conference and it dropped the Rockets (7-3 overall) to 2-3 in the PAC-6. On the other side, Riverside (9-1 overall) improved to 4-0 and now leads Person by 2 1/2 games in the standings.

Three straight conference setbacks do not have Rocket head coach Steve Evans ready to push the panic button just yet. However, he does think there is reason for concern.

“It’s still early and we’ve got four non-conference games to straighten ourselves out,” he said. “By no means am I devastated by this loss, but I am concerned. The conference games are the ones we need to win to get to the playoffs. The non-conference wins are nice and they look good, but they don’t really help you towards that goal.”

Person is undefeated in non-conference games so far this season.

Tuesday’s affair was scoreless through three innings before Riverside broke through for a run in the fourth, three in the fifth, and two in the sixth against Person starter Jeremy Peed (5 1/3 innings, eight hits, four strikeouts, two walks), who fell to 2-2.

An errant throw on a force-out play led to Riverside’s fourth-inning score. And with one out in the fifth, Khalin Villines walked and Scott Crane doubled to put runners on second and third.

Then RBI singles by D.J. Thomas and Brian Burgess, and a sacrifice fly by Blaze Tart brought in three more Pirate runs and produced a 4-0 lead.

Person got right back in the game in its half of the fifth when Ricky Crabtree led off with a single and scored on Cody Ellis’s double to left. Two outs later, Marc Davis powered a home run over the left field fence to make it 4-3.

The dugout erupted and came out to greet Davis as he crossed home plate.

The good feeling was short-lived, however, as the visitors came right back with two in the top of the sixth.

A single, a hit-batsman, a sacrifice bunt, and a two-run double by Villines helped the Pirates score twice more and chase Peed, who was relieved by Craig Reid (his first pitching appearance of the season).

The Rockets had one last gasp in the seventh.

Ellis and pinch hitter Blaine Vachieri opened the inning with singles against Riverside reliever Tart, who took over for starter Ari Seelinger to begin the sixth. The next two hitters stuck out before Reid walked to load them. But Tart was able to induce Stephen Wright to tap into a ground out and end the game.

Evans felt his team’s play led to many of the Riverside runs.

“We didn’t capitalize on that opportunity [in the seventh] but we shouldn’t have been in that position to begin with,” he said. “You can’t give a good team like Riverside runs and that’s what we did tonight. We had to battle from behind the whole time because of it, and that makes it tough.”

The Rockets resume play in a non-conference game against Halifax on Friday night at Rocket Park (7 p.m. start).