PRINCESS ANNE, Maryland — The University of Maryland Eastern Shore went 3-2 on the opening day of Competition at the James Brown Invitational at the AMF Towson Lanes, on Friday (Feb. 11).

Eastern Shore (43-35, 3-5 MEAC) started the day strong with a 1011-992 win against host Morgan State. But from there things got a bit inconsistent. The Hawks struggled a bit in the middle games with the transition, but for the most part just didn't convert spares most of the day.

"I feel like this is the worst spare-shooting performance we have had this year," Petrin said. "We struck quite a bit today. It was a more difficult day than we expected not because of the pattern, but because from pair-to-pair there was a lot of difference. I think we got too caught up on trying to strike and how to strike more and we lost focus on a lot of our spare shooting."

It was fortunate that the Hawks struck as much as they did — a 46% rate — which was the second-highest strike percentage of the season.

The Shore took the second match against Mount Aloysius College 870-740, but then went into a 946-864 loss to Mount St. Mary's.

"We lost focus on bowling complete frames," Petrin said. "Ultimately being in fifth place when we missed 13 single-pin spares is not a bad place to be and we are only 53 pins back from third."

A 1078-818 win against Saint Francis Brooklyn was a high point for the day, but even that came with its caveats as the team missed quite a few makables.

The day ended with a 995-900 loss to Saint Francis University (Pa.).

Saturday's schedule features five Traditional team games.

"It's hard to say let's have a different game plan," Petrin said. "I thought we struck a decent amount and made decent choices. I think having today's information we should be able to make quicker changes and then hopefully we can stay focused and shoot our spares more accurately."