Junior Brittney Jones broke an 8-8 tie with an RBI single in the sixth inning, and sophomore Sidney Salmans scored on a Liberty fielding error during that play to provide the two-run cushion.
NSU (8-4) made the most of its seven hits to finish the Baylor tournament 2-3 with both wins coming against Liberty (3-8).

"We had better quality at-bats today, hitting more line drives and ground balls," said NSU coach Donald Pickett. "We were able to work their pitchers and get people on base.
"We had the lead three different times, but Liberty fought hard and challenged us. We didn't panic and we kept playing the game. Jones came up with the big hit to open the game up, and when we work together as an offense like we did today, we can be a pretty tough team."

The Liberty win comes on the heels of an emotional Saturday that included a nine-inning win over Liberty (4-3 score) before a heartbreaking 4-3 loss to No. 21 Baylor in which the Lady Bears came from behind late. NSU dropped its two Friday games against North Texas (9-5 score) and Baylor (10-0 in five innings).

On Sunday, NSU had to play from behind as Liberty scored two runs each in the second and third innings to grab a 4-1 edge.

But the Lady Demons put together a huge fourth inning highlighted by sophomore Micaela Bouvier's two-out grand slam for the 5-4 advantage. Sophomore Sidney Salmans led off the inning with a single followed by two-out walks by Kellye Kincannon and Jones.

"What was huge in that inning is that we worked the pitcher to get the bases loaded," Pickett said. "Bouvier picked a good pitch."

Bouvier has a team-high 16 RBIs (15 in the last seven games) and is tied with Kincannon with four home runs. Kincannon (2-for-2, three runs scored) started the scoring with a solo home run in the first inning, and she continued her strong start with 18 hits, 12 RBIs and 11 runs scored in her first 12 games.

Salmans went 2-for-2 in the No. 9 hole.

In the circle, Bouvier (5-1) re-entered the game to record the final four outs after starting in the circle and throwing the first two innings. She surrendered a total of four runs (two earned) on four hits in 3 1/3 innings.

Junior Shelby Sells relieved Bouvier in the third inning after Bouvier put two runners aboard, finishing with four runs (three earned) on five hits in 3 2/3 innings.

Pickett mixed and matched his two primary pitchers because three other NSU pitchers are missing significant time this season.

"Not everybody knows that we have to pace our pitchers," said Pickett, whose pitchers weren't helped by four NSU errors Sunday. "Our pitchers were tired today, but they grinded it out.

"Our kids knew they had to score a lot of runs, but they didn't press when they got down. They knew they couldn't try to do too much, and they worked together."

Liberty took the lead again with three fifth-inning runs giving the Lady Flames a 7-5 edge, but NSU answered with three runs in the bottom of the inning to regain the advantage.

Kincannon scored a run on one of three Liberty errors before a Micayla Sorosiak pop fly scored the second run. A Liberty throwing error after Sorosiak's fly out led to Jones scoring NSU's third run of the inning.

NSU returns to Lady Demon Diamond on Wednesday to face ULM at 5 p.m.