LAKE CHARLES – "Sixth-inning magic" returned to the Northwestern State softball team as the Lady Demons outlasted all-conference pitcher Hannah Null and held on to a late lead Tuesday in a 4-3 win against Abilene Christian.
Trailing 1-0, NSU struck for four runs in the sixth inning after Null allowed just one hit in the first five innings.
The No. 7 seed Lady Demons (28-23) advance out of the single-elimination game to play host and No. 3 seed McNeese today at 6:30 p.m.
Freshman Cayla Jones (All-SLC first team) led off the frame with a triple followed by a Sidney Harris walk. Sophomore Kaitlyn St. Clair (All-SLC third team) tied the game on a sacrifice fly before Codi Vernace put NSU up 2-1 on a single.
Sophomore Hayley Barbazon crushed her second home run of the season to give the Lady Demons a pair of insurance runs and a 4-1 lead, scores that would come in handy.
"St. Clair got down 0-2 in that at-bat … but she squared one out to drive in a run," said NSU coach Donald Pickett. "Codi coming up with two outs with a huge hit, and then Barbazon comes up with a big one.
"That's how it works. You get on, you get a hit, work a sacrifice fly, work some at-bats, and then the big one shows up. We had clutch hits, and we had to have a everybody to do it. A great team win."
NSU has scored its most runs in the sixth inning – 52 of its 252 runs this season (about a fifth).
NSU pitcher Micaela Bouvier (14-10) dueled Hannah Null and gave the Lady Demons a chance to solve her ACU counterpart. Bouvier surrendered just one run on three hits in the first six innings before running into trouble in the late innings.
Bouvier sidestepped a hit batter, one of her six free passes, to strand a runner in the sixth inning.
Bouvier started the seventh inning with a walk and a single, bringing in junior pitcher Mikayla Brown.
Brown hit a batter to load the bases, and an ACU fielder's choice scored a run to close the gap to 4-2. The Deville native recorded her second out via a fly ball before a walk and a hit batter scored another run to slice NSU's edge to 4-3.
With bases loaded, Brown steeled herself and induced a line out to a diving Toni Hebert at shortstop for the win and her second save of the season.
It supported Bouvier (All-SLC honorable mention), who allowed three runs on four hits, including a fourth-inning home run by Kayla Keeling for the game's first run.
"Micaela did an awesome job, and that game was two seniors fighting," Pickett said. "Both were hanging in there, and we were trying to have good at-bats against Null. "Bouvier kept us right where we needed to be because we knew we weren't going to scratch many off (Null).
"We had some good at-bats early in the game, and we got hits when we needed them."
