NATCHITOCHES, La. – The Nicholls State University softball team was held to four hits in its Sunday doubleheader against Northwestern State as the Lady Demons completed the series sweep over the Colonels with 7-0 and 8-0 victories at Lady Demon Park.
With the losses, the Colonels (24-19, 10-11 SLC) fall to under .500 in conference play and slide down to eighth in the standings, trailing Stephen F. Austin and Texas A&M-Corpus Christi by a half game. Northwestern State (28-14, 17-2 SLC) stays in first place and has a 2.5 game lead over Central Arkansas.
Nicholls returns to action next weekend in its 2015 home finale against Southeastern Louisiana. The three-game series will start on Friday, April 24, at 6 p.m.
Game 1 – Northwestern State 7, Nicholls 0 Cassandra Barefield launched a grand slam in the first inning and the Lady Demons went on to cruise to a 7-0 victory against Nicholls to clinch the series.
Nicholls had three hits in the loss, all coming in a span of four batters in the second and third innings.
Danielle Phillips and
Haley Stevenson both delivered two-out singles in the second, and
Kayla Prater led off the third with a base hit. But the Colonels would be held hitless the rest of the way by Baylee Gray (4-4), who tossed all seven innings and finished with seven strikeouts.
Brittany Virgoe added an insurance run for NSU with a leadoff homer in the third, and the Lady Demons tacked on two more in the sixth.
Jackie Johnson (7-8) took the loss, pitching six innings with five earned runs on five hits. Johnson, who struck out seven batters, left the game after five innings but came back in after
Taylor Hastings walked the bases loaded in the sixth with no outs.
NSU finished with five hits, led by two from Virgoe.
Game 2 – Northwestern State 8, Nicholls 0 (5 innings) An
Alexis Huss single to right field in the first inning was the only hit Nicholls tallied against NSU starter Mikayla Brown and the Lady Demon offense continued its offensive onslaught as Northwestern State picked up its second walk-off five-inning win with an 8-0 victory.
Nicholls, which was outscored 23-0 in the sweep against the first-place Lady Demons, had only two batters reach base against Brown, as Prater drew a walk in the fifth inning.
NSU used two hits in the second inning to take a 3-0 lead and pushed the margin to 5-0 in the third with a two-run single by Kaytie Proctor. The single chased
Hannah Haydel (12-9) from the game, putting her in line for the loss.
After Prater's walk in the fifth ended Brown's streak of 11 consecutive batters retired, NSU scored three runs in the bottom half to earn the walk-off mercy-rule victory. The Lady Demons put the first two batters on against Johnson, who came in to pitch in the second. Haydel re-entered the game to try to limit the damage, but Micayla Sorosiak had other plans as she ended the series with a three-run homer.
Haydel suffered the loss after giving up six runs on six hits in 2.1 innings. She recorded five strikeouts and walked four.
