Monday’s baseball game in Marshalltown was a tale of two offenses.

Nevada played the hits while Bobcat head coach Colton Hanke felt the Bobcats were too often left with a bat on the shoulder in a 7-2 loss at Marshalltown High School.

MHS (4-27) will finish up Iowa Alliance play on Wednesday with a doubleheader at Des Moines North/Hoover.

The Bobcats struck out 10 times, five of them called strike threes.

“They [Nevada] kept swinging and we didn’t,” Hanke said.

Conversely, Nevada rolled up 13 hits on Monday. While the Bobcats did well to limit the damage at times, the Cubs rolled up six runs on six hits and a walk in the fourth inning.

“We were leaving the ball up in the zone and if you do that against a team who’s swinging, that type of stuff is going to happen,” Hanke said. “You take the one inning out and it’s a whole different game, but you have to leave that one inning in — you gotta be consistent from the first pitch to the last pitch and we just couldn’t get ahead.”

Zander Stupp allowed seven runs on 13 hits with four strikeouts and three walks; Marshalltown’s defense also committed three errors.

Marshalltown took an early 1-0 lead in the first inning when Caleb Kusserow reached on a leadoff walk, then stole 2nd, and advanced home on an errant throw trying to catch him stealing third base.

Kusserow had a similar trajectory in the seventh inning for the Bobcats’ other run, drawing a one-out walk, stealing second and then scoring on a two-out, two-base error on a ball put in play by Sam Greazel.

In between those runs were several innings of the Marshalltown offense unable to all get on base at the same time — leaving eight runners on the basepaths as a result, five of whom were in scoring position.

“We have to start small with our guys just being willing to swing with two strikes, fight it off and put it in play instead of putting it in the umpire’s hands,” Hanke said.

The Cubs spoiled Marshalltown’s Senior Night, honoring Caleb Kusserow and Dale Greene.

Both have had radically-different paths through Bobcat baseball — Kusserow in his fourth season on the Bobcat varsity roster and Greene, a senior that Hanke said contacted him days before the start of the season wanting to join the Bobcats for his first and last season of high school baseball.

“Anybody in general who wants to come out and play a team sport can make a big difference,” Hanke said. “They have a big impact on us and we need those guys, we’re a young team and they’ve both been more than willing to help out.”

Marshalltown will be looking for their first wins since the last time they played the Polar Bears at home on June 19 — the Bobcats swept North/Hoover, 13-3, 12-11 in those games at MHS.