Narrow losses plagued Nansemond-Suffolk Academy’s baseball team throughout the season, and it was a narrow loss that ended its 2015 campaign on Tuesday.

No. 4 Cape Henry Collegiate School hosted the No. 5 Saints and defeated them 2-0 in the quarterfinals of the Tidewater Conference of Independent Schools tournament.

“Both teams played very well. (We) just came up a little bit short,” NSA coach David Mitchell said, adding that the Saints “just couldn’t push any runs across.”

The Dolphins hosted Nansemond-Suffolk on April 23 during the regular season and won 12-2.

“We had much better starting pitching today,” Mitchell said on Tuesday, praising sophomore James Mullin. “He threw five innings, did outstanding for us.”

Between Mullin and junior Hunter Foster, who relieved Mullin entering the sixth inning, Mitchell said, “It was probably the best pitching performance and the best defensive game that we’ve played the entire year.”

The Saints committed only one error, and Cape Henry had none.

On offense, the Dolphins were simply able to produce a little bit more than NSA. The Saints had only four hits, while Mullin and Foster scattered seven hits by Cape Henry.

“They got both their runs in the third with two outs,” Mitchell said.

Only one of them was earned. The other came when Nansemond-Suffolk attempted to pick off a runner at second base, but the ball went into centerfield instead, allowing the runner to score.

Of NSA’s four hits, senior Toby Buchanan had two, going 2-for-3.

The state tournament will follow the TCIS tournament, but the Saints did not qualify to play in it. The latest Virginia Independent Schools Athletic Association Division II poll came out with Nansemond-Suffolk ranked 10th, and only the top eight teams qualify for state-level play.

“Unfortunately for us, we had some one-run losses to teams ranked above us,” Mitchell said, referring to No. 6 The Covenant School and No. 8 Christchurch School.

The Saints had a total of four one-run losses this season, and in some of those games, they held the lead going into the seventh inning.

“We just couldn’t close them out,” Mitchell said.

The Saints finished this year with a 6-10 overall record, and during the regular season, they went 4-5 in the TCIS.

Mitchell said that this year there were “definitely some growing pains. We lost a huge senior class.”

None of NSA’s returning pitchers this year had won a game last season.

And though the Saints featured only two seniors, Alberto Smith and Buchanan, Mitchell said, “I still expected and anticipated us to compete in the TCIS.”

Nansemond-Suffolk had lots of juniors this season, but they also had a lot of players with no varsity-level experience.

“Our last eight games, we’ve seeing pitching anywhere from 84 to 88 miles an hour every game,” Mitchell said. “A lot of (our) guys hadn’t seen that (before).”