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SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. — Crusader head coach Rich Wagner knows there will be a few bumps on the road to greatness.

Friday, his youthful Northwest Nazarene softball team hit a few small bumps along that road in the California Bay Area, dropping a pair of close nonconference contests to host San Francisco State, 4-0 and 7-5.

"We need to do a better job competing every pitch starting with the first pitch of the game," Wagner said, adding, "we are a very young team that is learning every day.

"When this team eliminates the small mistakes, and some of our hard-hit balls start dropping, we will start seeing a lot of success."

In the day's opener, NNU (3-4 overall) just couldn't get those base knocks to drop as Lily Paschal, Cassidy Fifield and Shelbie Martinez each had one base hit, all of the Crusaders offense.

Still, NNU hung tough against the Gators (2-0), who scored four runs in the fourth, and that was all they could muster against the tough pitching of Kendall Goodwin and Nicole Arizana for the Crusaders.

Goodwin (3-2) and Arizana each scattered three hits and struck out a batter apiece in the contest.

In the nightcap, NNU clicked early as Kylie Orr doubled in a run in the top of the first and an Ali Schauer RBI single in the fourth put the Crusaders in front, 2-0.

But a pair of errors led to five unearned runs for SFSU in the bottom half of the fourth, and the Gators tacked on two more in the fifth.

Undaunted, NNU answered with one big swing from Kiahna Brown, a three-run homer down the left-field line, cutting the difference to 7-5 in the sixth before the comeback came up short.

Schauer had a pair of hits in the second game for NNU, which also got a base knock from Fifield, who has hit safely in all seven games this season.

The Crusaders remain on the road in California, playing another doubleheader Saturday at the Academy of Art starting at 1 p.m. (MT).