OMAHA, Neb. — The College of Saint Mary softball team found some offensive rhythm on Friday but came up short, dropping both ends of a Great Plains Athletic Conference double-header to visiting Briar Cliff University.
Head coach Carolyn Todd Bray took some positives away from today’s performance, saying, “the positive is that we are hitting much better than a week ago. We had five home runs today. But our hitting is happening too late in games. The bottom of our order had a great day today.”
Conversely, she observed, “we’re still giving up too many runs and then are forced to play catch-up. I’m happy with the fight we are showing in the later innings but in order for us to win games we need to be more consistent.”
Briar Cliff improves to 17-14 on the year and evens their GPAC record at 5-5. The losses drop the Flames to 7-21 overall and 0-8 in the conference.
The Flames are back in action Saturday when they host Mount Marty in a GPAC double-header at 1 p.m.
Game One: BCU 5, CSM 4
Paige Stuck (2-4) and Shaylynn Campbell (2-3) each homered in the opener but Briar Cliff prevailed 5-4 in a nail-biter.
The Chargers scored the first four runs of the game before the CSM bats woke up.
Following Kylie Wilhelms homer in the top of the fifth, the Flames answered with a big three-run inning in the bottom half. Campbell jump-started the offense with her second home run of the year to lead off the frame. Megan Garcia and Savannah Schewe delivered back-to-back RBI-singles to pull within a run.
Montie Richter got a run back for Briar Cliff, with a two-out run-scoring single in the sixth.
Trailing by two, Stuck led off the bottom of the seventh with a solo blast, her second, to make it a one-run game but the next three Flame batters were set down in order as Briar Cliff held on for the win.
Campbell (4-10) went the distance in the circle taking the loss for the Flames.
Grace Batcheller (5-6) earned the win 4.2 innings of work. Georgia Krohn picked up her third save with 2.1 innings of relief. Krohn came on in the fifth with two runners on base and induced a fly ball to escape further harm.
Game Two: BCU 11, CSM 6
A six-run second inning by Briar Cliff proved too much for CSM to overcome as the Flames dropped game two 11-6.
Macy Santoni (2-3) delivered CSM’s first multi-home run game of the year with solo shots in both the fourth and seventh innings.
Sydney Griffin (2-3) put the Flames on the board first with a single to score Paige Stuck in the bottom of the first.
After the offensive explosion by Briar Cliff, Griffin singled home another run for CSM in the third to cut the lead to 6-2.
The Chargers struck for three more runs in the fourth before Santoni answered with her first home run.
Single runs in each the sixth and seventh put Briar Cliff up 11-3.
CSM tried to mount a rally in the seventh. Santoni jacked a leadoff blast and Savannah Schewe belted a two-out, two-run home run to cut the deficit to 11-6. Griffin followed with a walk as the Flames built some momentum but that was snuffed out on batter later with a pop-up to end the game.
