Stephen F. Austin
Depaul
SFA Drops Two Heartbreakers in Houston
2/13/2015 12:00:00 AM | Softball
HOUSTON, Texas – The Stephen F. Austin softball team fell just short in both games on the first day of the Houston Hilton Plaza Invitational, falling 5-4 to DePaul and 6-4 to the University of Massachusetts on Friday afternoon at Cougar Softball Stadium.
The Ladyjacks (2-5) started the day by building a 4-1 lead against DePaul (3-4) through six and a half innings played, but couldn’t finish out a pesky Blue Demon team. DePaul, a team that opened the 2015 season ranked 25th in the nation in the NFCA Preseason Poll, scored four runs in the bottom of the seventh inning to come away with the walk-off victory. Mary Connolly recorded the final RBI single to push across the winning run with one out.
Senior Shalie Day and sophomore Brittany Lewis helped SFA jump in front 2-0 after the first inning. Lewis opened the game with a leadoff walk and later came home on a double off the bat of Day. Day would touch home herself on a wild pitch in the inning.
Both Lewis and Day displayed their power with solo home runs in the tournament opener. Lewis went deep in the second to pad SFA’s lead to 3-0. Her second dinger of the year came with two outs and nobody on in the inning. After DePaul got on the board in the second, Day led off the third inning with her first homer of the season – a bomb to left field – to make it a three-run SFA advantage again at 4-1.
The score would remain the same until the Blue Demon rally in the seventh.
Just as in the first game, the Ladyjacks jumped out to a 2-0 lead in Friday’s second contest against UMass (1-0). Alisa Hamilton got things started with a walk in the second and Heather Hollingsworth followed with a single. The slappers each stole second in the inning and scored via a Minutewomen error and a Lewis RBI bunt.
UMass rattled off four unanswered runs over the third and fourth innings, but SFA was able to rally back to even things at 4-4. Day drew a walk to lead off the fifth and scored on an error following a single by Taylor Fraccastoro. Hamilton drove Fraccastoro in with an RBI single up the middle with two outs to finish the scoring for SFA.
The Minutewomen strung together four straight singles in the sixth inning, resulting in two runs to take the lead 6-4. The Ladyjacks would threaten in their final two chances but couldn’t come up with a late-inning rally.
The Ladyjacks will look to bounce back on the second day of the tournament with games against McNeese State at 9:00 a.m. and the University of Northern Iowa at 11:30 a.m.
-SFA-
