KENAI — Alaska Road Warriors head coach Steve Mossburgh called his team’s play sloppy. Kenai Twins skipper John Butler dubbed his squad’s defense as ugly.

A combined 14 errors will do that.

Fortunately for the Road Warriors, though, the Twins committed more. The Wasilla-based squad overcame an early deficit and took control during a three-run sixth, an inning that started with three of the Twins’ eight errors, in capturing a challenging 6-3, seven-inning win in the Bill Miller Big Fish Wood Bat Tournament on Wednesday at Coral Seymour Memorial Park in Kenai. The Road Warriors win also doubled as a league victory and was earned with aluminum bats despite the tourney’s namesake.

“It was a bad game for us to play bad,” Butler laughed. “It was pretty ugly. But then that’s been our Achilles heel is that we’ll come out and play fairly decent defensive baseball and then we’ll come out, we can’t make a play.”

A handful of the Twins miscues came on routine plays, too —a dropped fly ball, a bobbled grounder and wild throws to first.

“We had seven outs one inning, that’s just unacceptable there,” Butler said. “We’re not good enough yet to overcome those type of errors.

“But I’ve still got a lot of confidence in these guys. I saw improvement for the last two weeks, each ball game we’ve had improvement. Today we took a step back,” he added. “But one of the things that we talk about is that we’re going to have a bad game. Unfortunately, seven of us had a bad game at the same time.”

Alaska’s six blunders, two of which helped the Twins jump in front 3-0 in the first, were rather misleading considering Mossburgh estimates his team averages nearly that many every game.

“It was real sloppy on our part to start with. Real sloppy,” he said. “We do make a lot of errors. That’s something we really have to cut down on. I’ve told these guys all year that if you make errors, you can’t beat good teams at all, ever. That’s a good team.

“There’s things we needed to do a lot better, like better decisions on where we throw the ball and when we throw the ball and who we throw the ball to. We’re working on that,” Mossburgh added. “But overall, I told them I was proud of them the way they did fight back.”

The Twins contributed to that rally.

Trailing 3-2 entering the fifth, Mike Wagner walked to begin the frame and advanced all the way to third when Josh Gilbert fanned Eric Washington, but catcher Bobby Myles’ throw down to second was wild. Rhowe Stefanski then grounded to shortstop Larsen Kohler, who fired home in an attempt to catch Wagner, but his head-first slide avoided the tag and tied the game at 3.

Gilbert, who had already thrown 99 pitches through five innings, came back out for the sixth and immediately found himself in a jam, no thanks to his defense.

Three straight errors loaded the bases and consecutive RBI singles by Washington and Stefanski staked Wasilla to a 5-3 lead.

“Josh wasn’t the sharpest he’s been this year, but he still threw well enough that we should have backed him up,” Butler said. “But I will give Wasilla a lot of credit, too. Even with as bad as we played, they could have very well have laid down and they just came out and just played hard. That was impressive.”

After Stefanski’s base hit knocked Gilbert from the game, Tyler Marcuson walked Keith Christopher in forcing home another run.

Wagner allowed just three runs on eight hits and three walks over six-plus innings, departing after Jake Darrow singled to start the seventh.

“I told Wagner before he came out for the seventh inning, ‘One guy on base, you’re done,’” Mossburgh said. “That was my decision.”

A wise one at that.

Matt Packa allowed a pair of runners to reach on fielder’s choices but recorded a fly to right and a strikeout to close the game and help the

Road Warriors avenge a 10-3 setback to Service in the day’s first game.

“They outplayed us,” Butler said. “Even after their tough loss the first game, they came out and played well. We started off playing fairly well and

then we just kind of went brain-dead there for a while.”

For the second day in a row, the Twins jumped in front in the first.

Darrow singled, stole second and scored on a screaming liner up the middle by Gilbert, who took second on a wild throw and then came home himself on a first-pitch bloop single by Mitchell Thompson. Following a walk to Kohler, Thompson scored to make it 3-0 when Wasilla catcher Taylor Palmer tried to catch Kohler stealing second.

“We can’t stand prosperity some ball games,” Butler joked. “We get ahead and go, ‘Well, let’s quit hitting the ball for a while.’”

The Road Warriors slowly chipped away, striking for a run in each of the second and third innings, their first run scoring on a routine throw gone awry and the second coming home on an RBI ground-out by Wagner. Alaska also dropped a pair of games to Service during the three-day event. The Cougars beat the Warriors 9-6 on Tuesday and 10-3 on Wednesday.