The Lake Mills baseball team faced hard-throwing pitchers on back-to-back nights and as a result the bats suffered as the Bulldogs took two lopsided losses.

Lake Mills traveled to Mason City to face No. 1-ranked Newman Catholic and its flame-thrower Kyle McCann. McCann, who Bulldogs head coach Jason Blaser threw between 85-86 mph, struck out 14 hitters and allowed just one run on three hits.

Royce Byrnes tallied two of those three hits.

Lake Mills took a 1-0 lead in the top of the third and had a chance to add more with bases loaded and one out, but was unable to find a timely hit.

The Knights were able to strike in the bottom half to take a 3-1 lead and went on to add four in the sixth and three in the seventh for a 10-1 win.

The Bulldogs (3-5 overall, 1-1 NIC) were faced with the task of facing a similar pitcher Tuesday night against Armstrong-Ringsted in Lake Mills and the result was nearly the same.

Lake Mills mustered just two hits in a 7-0 loss to the Mustangs.

Ridge Christiansen, who also threw in the mid-80s, stuck out 10 batters in seven innings to pick up the shutout win.

Six of the 10 strikeouts were called third strikes.

Armstrong-Ringsted had just seven hits in the game, but took advantage of four Bulldog errors.

“When they only got seven hits they shouldn’t be scoring seven runs,” Blaser said.

Only three of the runs were earned.

Lake Mills faces Belmond-Klemme in a conference contest Wednesday in Lake Mills.

Armstrong-Ringsted 7, Lake Mills 0

Armstrong-Ringsted 113 001 1 — 7 7 0

Lake Mills 000 000 0 — 0 2 4

WP — Ridge Christiansen 7 IP, 2 H, 0 R, 0 ER, 3 BB, 10 K

LP — Levi Dahle 2 IP, 4 R, 2 ER, 2 H, 2 BB, 0 K

Newman 10, Lake Mills 1

Lake Mills 001 000 0 —  1 3 2

Newman 003 043 x — 10 10 1

WP — Kyle McCann 7 IP, 3 H, 1 R, 1 ER, 2 BB, 14 K

LP — Wade Hebrink 4 2/3 IP, 7 H, 7 R, 7 ER, 5 BB, 4 K