The Selma University Bulldogs baseball team opened their season with a three-game road stretch, but finally returned to Selma for their home opener against the Tuskegee University Golden Tigers on Tuesday afternoon.

“We’re really excited to get started today,” Selma University head baseball coach Adrian Holloway said. “We had a great day for baseball and our first home opener. It was really exciting to be out here today.”

The Bulldogs are returning from a tough road trip to start the season.

“We played some tough games on the road before we came home, so hopefully that’ll help us get into a rhythm and get some quality baseball to start the season off,” Holloway said.

Unfortunately, the Bulldogs dropped game one of a double header to the Golden Tigers 17-14.

The game got off to a rough start as the Bulldogs allowed five runs in the first inning, which included a homerun.

They allowed another five runs in the second inning with the help of two errors and timely triple.

“We had a bad start today,” Holloway said. “We just didn’t hit the ball and made some errors. That killed us.”

The Bulldogs bats didn’t start getting active until they were trailing 15-2 after the top of the fifth inning.  The bottom of the fifth, however, started a rally that got the team back in the game.

The team went through the whole lineup and scored seven runs on eight hits to cut Tuskegee lead down to 15-9.

“We showed a little fight and fought back,” Holloway said. “We brought it back within a few runs, but weren’t able to seal the deal.”

The Bulldogs kept fighting back, but were unable to tie or overtake the Golden Tigers in game one.

“When we come together and start playing our type of baseball, we’ll be fine,” Holloway said. “We can’t take anything away from our opponents. We played against some pretty good opponents. We just have to play some good baseball and get a W.”

Selma University’s next game will be at home on Saturday, Feb. 24 against Rust College for a double-header starting at noon.