HAMMOND – Relentless pressure by the Southeastern base runners along with a handful of fielding miscues in both games on Friday led to a pair of loses for Northwestern State.
The 7-3 defeat in game one and 8-0 loss in game two removed the Lady Demons (28-19, 10-7) from contention for either of the top two seeds in next week's Southland Conference Tournament.
The Lady Demons missed a chance to take the early lead in the series opener after a leadoff single and an error put runners at the corners in the first inning. A swing and miss ended the inning leaving the first of five critical runners on base in the game.
Sage Hoover struck out the side in the bottom of the inning around a one-out walk, but after a quick inning at the plate by the offense, saw the first five Southeastern (36-14, 13-4) reach base in the second. After allowing two runs to come across with no outs and the bases loaded, Hoover was able to dance out of the inning allowing just one more run but the Lady Lions had done enough damage with three in the inning.
Down 4-0, the Lady Demons got a late boost of offense in the fifth and sixth innings with some quality two-out hits.
Laney Roos hit a single to left to score the first run of the game for the Lady Demons in the fifth and back-to-back doubles in the sixth from
Kat Marshall and
Tristin Court produced two more runs.
The three-run burst late in the game however was not enough as the Lady Lions answered each NSU run with one of their own to maintain the four-run lead through the end of the game.
Southeastern continued its relentless pressure into the second game picking up a run in the first inning after a leadoff walk, sacrifice bunt and base hit up the middle.
Three more runs came across in the bottom of the second on three hits and a squeeze bunt putting the Lady Demons down by four once again early in the game.
The Lady Lions scored in each of the shortened five innings of the game, swiping three bags, eight total in the two games, and taking advantage of three NSU errors along the way.
The losses eliminate the Lady Demons from contention for either of the top two seeds in the conference tournament. Combined with the two wins by Texas A&M-Corpus Christi at UIW on Friday, NSU falls to the four spot in the standings and will have that seed in the bracket.
NSU and Southeastern close the regular season with a Saturday matinee game beginning at 12 p.m.
