FUQUAY-VARINA — Fuquay-Varina’s baseball team had its chances to finish Garner off in Saturday’s finale of the Four Oaks Bank Tri-Eight Tournament. And those missed chances were exactly what upset Fuquay coach Milton Senter so much.

Despite having men in scoring position in both the sixth and seventh inning, the Bengals could not pull out of a 2-2 tie and eventually lost 4-2 in extra innings to the Trojans.

“We were one play away from winning the game on several occasions. We had men on third base with less than two outs and we just didn’t do the situational hitting like we should have,” Senter said. “They did a better defensive job and hit the ball harder in key situations better than we did.”

Garner’s Hunter Brown hit a two-run home run in the extra eighth inning then closed out the bottom half of the inning on the pitching mound for the Trojans, sealing the win.

Fuquay lost two of the three games during the tournament as it gets ready for the meat of its conference schedule this week.

Pitcher Travis Long pitched a solid game, no-hitting the Trojans into the fourth inning and pitching out of jams late in the game. Long said he felt a confidence boost when the Fuquay coaches kept him out in tough spots.

“I knew I had to get out of it and stay in the ball game,” Long said. “Coaches told me to go after them and I was able to throw strikes.”

Fuquay began the game quickly, with an RBI double from centerfielder Phillip Cotton and an RBI single from first baseman Tyler McCauley. But after getting a run in the fourth, Garner tied the game in the sixth with a home run from Jeremy Conyers.

And after chances to take the lead in the sixth and seventh failed for the Bengals, Brown ended the game in extra innings.

“I know in one incident I was on third in the fifth inning, and we had moved me around the whole inning but we just couldn’t make the play when it counted,” Long said.

Though the tournament, which pitted teams from the Tri-Eight against other area schools in a round-robin format, wasn’t as successful as the Bengas had hoped, Long said the team learned plenty of lessons.

“All the games were close, so we just have to figure out how to pull off those close games consistently and build up some confidence,” Long said.

With games against Apex and Cary on the slate this week for Fuquay Senter and the team knows this time they’ll have to make the big plays in big situations.

“Hopefully we don’t get discouraged. We get right back into conference play and we’re still 3-1 in the league and we got Apex on Wednesday and Cary on Friday,” Senter said. “We have to win those so we can stay on pace.”

Max Ashworth, of the tournament sponsor Four Oaks Bank & Trust, threw out the first pitch on Saturday.