Sadly for Mustang fans, East was introduced to more vocabulary additions on Monday afternoon when it fell 16-6 to powerhouse Providence in a waterlogged Cliff Peeler Baseball Classic championship game. Ugly new verbs like “10-runned.” Even uglier phrases like “14-run inning.”

Those are things that East coach Jeff Safrit, who has won more than 300 high school games in his illustrious career, has never had to consider. At least until yesterday.

“I never had 14 scored on me in an inning,” said Safrit, shaking his head at the dismal memory of Providence’s frightful fifth that sent soggy fans home early from NewmanPark. “I’ve done it to people a few times. I’ve never had it done to me. That’s also the first time I’ve ever been beaten on the 10-run rule.”

In fairness to East, ranked fourth in 3A, Safrit did not throw ace Brian Hatley (8-1), who might have drastically affected the outcome. Safrit opted to save Hatley for Wednesday’s 3A South Piedmont Conference game with Kannapolis, a contest which is not life-and-death for league champ East, but is certainly critical to third-place West Rowan’s playoff hopes.

Also in fairness to East (20-3), it should be noted that the Mustangs were not simply blown away from the start. The hits were even at 10 apiece and East led 6-2 and was very much in charge until the wheels and everything else came off in the top of the fifth.

Nineteen was a pretty good number for football Hall of Famer John Unitas. It was not a good number for East on Monday. That’s how many batters Providence (19-3) sent to the plate in that mind-numbing fifth. Faces clean-shaven when the inning began sported beards when it finally ended. Three Mustang hurlers retired one batter apiece. In between, the Panthers, the No. 4 team in the state in 4A, collected seven hits — including homers by Tim Coffield and Kelly Widman and booming doubles by Mark Griffin, Mark Schleicher and Scott Barton. Providence also drew five walks, had two batters hit by pitches and took advantage of two Mustang miscues.

“Providence swings the bats — no doubt about that — but it was the untimely walks that hurt us more than anything,” said Safrit.

The bottom line is that Providence, fighting for its sixth straight conference crown, has one heck of a well-balanced team. All nine starters scored at least one run. Seven different hitters had RBIs.

“That was the thing in the fifth,” said Panther coach J.D. Colquitt. “We got hot and everyone fed off of it. Kids couldn’t wait to get to the bat rack. We don’t have an easy out in our lineup and it turned into Murderer’s Row.”

The key to the game was the fact that Providence didn’t flinch when the Mustangs opened that 6-2 lead with a flurry of base hits against starter Matt Dubin (4-0). Cal Hayes Jr. had a two-run double in the second; Drew Davis stayed hot with a pair of RBI singles; and Justin Miller and Brian Hatley drove in a run each.

“I wasn’t concerned at all when we got down,” said Colquitt. “We’ve been there before. All year long, we’ve played our best once we got behind. Our guys started to feel a little pressure and that was just fine. That’s when they said, ‘OK, now it’s time.’ ”

The game-turning blow was provided by No. 5 hitter Coffield, who stepped to the plate 0-for-2 on the day and looking a lot less scary than the guy in front of him, Schleicher, the tournament MVP.

Drew Lyerly, the No. 4 guy in East’s rotation, had pitched well up to that point, but after working around Schleicher, he threw a waist-high, bases-loaded pitch to Coffield, who promptly hit it halfway up the trees behind the left-field fence to turn a 6-3 East lead into a 7-6 deficit.

That shot shifted momentum, and soon it was a runaway train. Moments later, Lyerly was literally knocked from the game by a wicked wallop by Barton that struck him just below the knee.

Safrit then summoned Jeremy Teague, the hero of Saturday’s opening-round win, but the right-hander retired just one of the nine batters he faced. Justin Leazer finally pushed the Mustangs to the safety of the dugout by retiring Mike Smith, up for the third time in the inning.

It was a shocker, but Safrit is confident his troops can forget about this one quickly.

“Ah, we’ll be fine,” he said. “We hit the ball and it’s not like we were making a bunch of errors out there.”

Colquitt, on the other hand, wants to remember this one for a little while.

“It was the matchup everyone expected and the matchup they wanted to see,” he said. “It was a lot of fun. We’d have been glad to play this one even if it poured down rain all day. It has to help us and give us confidence. A great East team got us down — tested us — but we ended up beating them pretty good.”