Jaguar Softball Advances To Face Top Seed ULL In SBC Tournament
Junior Farish Beard (21-5) struck out 13 against Louisiana-Monroe in the third round of the SBC Tournament, two shy if tying her career-high of 15 in a game. | Photo usajaguars.com
Farish Beard led the #22 ranked Jaguars past Louisiana-Monroe in their first game of the Sun Belt Conference Tournament with an 8-1 win over the Warhawks.
Beard struck out 13 in the game, finishing the game just two strikeouts shy of her career-high. She only allowed two hits on the game, a bunt single and an RBI chopper up the middle while only walking one batter as her record improves to 21-5 with 202 strikeouts on the season.
Emily Messer went a perfect 3-for-3 at the plate with a pair of RBI and runs scored. Kaitlyn Griffith went 2-for-2 with two RBI, a run scored and was hit by a pitch. Amanda Minahan also went 2-for-2 with a run scored and a sacrifice bunt.
Amanda Herron, Alyssa Linn, Gwen Jones and Taylor Rodgers all scored runs as well.
The team scored all of their runs in the second and third innings beginning with a five run second inning. Messer hit her first RBI when she singled to score Jones from third. Then back-to-back Warhawk errors let the Jags score four more runs to take a 5-0 lead. The first error was on Stephanie Pilkington’s fly out to left field. The second was a wide throw to first which allowed Blair Johnson to reach base and scoring Griffith and Messer.
In the top of the third inning ULM would scratch their only run across on back-to-back two-out singles with the second pushing the former across.
Then in the bottom of the third the Jags picked right back up where they left off the bottom of the second. Linn and Minahan both singled then Rodgers sacrifice bunt put them both in scoring position. Messer then hit her second RBI single of the day plated Linn. Then Griffith’s two-RBI double up the middle would score Minahan and Messer to make up the Jags 8-1 victory score.
Beard would then retire 12 of the Warhawks final 13 batters as they prepare to face top seeded UL-Lafayette in Game 8 on Friday at 2:00pm on ESPN3 to advance to the champion game on Saturday.