Buckingham County High School’s varsity baseball team had a rough start to the 2017-18 season Thursday after inclement weather shortened the Knights’ preseason training, but they are looking forward to the opportunity to improve.

The Knights fell 9-0 to visiting Central Lunenburg High School on Thursday evening.

“We did not pitch badly,” Buckingham Head Coach Michael Jones said. “Our defense has let us down today. We just didn’t play well defensively. But you can see, we haven’t had a lot of reps, and our hitting is not where we’d like for it to be at this point due to not getting a lot of reps, so hopefully the weather will allow us to get better at that next week.”

Four different Knights players benefited from time on the mound, including freshman Amari Toney, senior Brycen Newby, junior Peyton Taylor and sophomore Brayden Edwards.

“We felt like it was a game where we could get a lot of guys in and just see how they would perform,” Jones said. “And they are behind as we were expected to be. We just haven’t had a lot of opportunities to throw, so our pitchers are behind. Again, hopefully with the weather getting better, that will improve also.”

Buckingham had a core of seniors on last year’s team that Jones said constituted “pretty much half of our starters, and this year, we’ve got a lot of first- and second-year players. This year, we only have three seniors, so we’re going to struggle a little bit because of being young and inexperienced. Today, we started a couple guys that played (junior varsity) last year. So we’ve just got to keep plugging at it, and with more reps at every position, hopefully everything will get better.”

On the mound, “Amari is probably going to be our No. 1 guy,” Jones said.

Also expected to help Buckingham’s pitching staff will be Taylor and senior Bryce Leake. Leake started the season by serving a three-game suspension that stemmed from events which took place during the football season.

Newby, who was named to the all-state second team last year as a designated hitter, is expected to be key on offense for the Knights, as is Leake.

“We’re hoping that our leadoff guy, Tyrek Glover … we’re hoping that he can come around even more as a senior and solidify that leadoff spot for us,” Jones said.

The Knights, who were set to visit Appomattox County High School on Monday and Nottoway High School on Tuesday, will host Goochland High School, 5 p.m. Thursday.