The Panthers capped a wild couple of days at the A.L. Rabinovitz Tournament in Montgomery with their first loss of the season on Wednesday.

The McKinleyville boys carried a five-game winning streak into tournament play and won their opening two games on Tuesday.

The edged Analy 2-1 and followed that with a high-scoring 27-23 win over Montgomery later in the day.

That qualified the Panthers for Wednesday’s championship game, but things didn’t go their way and they would lose 16-1 in five innings to Ukiah.

The Wildcats, who improved to 6-3 with the win, broke the game open with 10 runs in the bottom of the fourth to open up a 15-run lead on their way to ending the game early.

“We just didn’t make the plays we needed to make,” McKinleyville head coach Mike Dobrec said. “We didn’t throw strikes and we had eight walks.”

The Ukiah boys, meanwhile, came ready to play.

“Ukiah just beat us,” Dobrec admitted. “They made all the plays, they threw the ball well and played good defense.”

After racking up 21 hits the previous day against Montgomery, the Mack bats managed just four hits against Ukiah.

Ruger Baxter finished 1-for-1 in the loss, while Tate Saso and Jake Brunner each went 1-for-2.

Bode Reininger also had a base hit for McKinleyville and finished 1-for-3, while Joe Tanno had his team’s lone RBI of the game.

Dobrec used multiple pitchers in the loss, with Hunter Carper getting the start and throwing three innings for the loss.

Despite that loss, it has been an impressive start to the new season for the 7-1 Panthers, who will have a two-week break between games before playing at Enterprise on April 1.