MU softball rallies past No. 13 LSU

COLUMBIA, Mo. - The similarities between the series finale and Friday's opener were overt, and bordered on suspiciously coincidental. Saturday, however, Missouri walked off against No. 13 LSU 5-4 in their its win against a ranked opponent under interim head coach Gina Fogue.

LSU's Carley Hoover couldn't find the strike zone in the bottom of the seventh. She hit Brooke Wilmes and walked Callie Martin and Trenity Edwards to load the bases with one out. Helias grad Paige Bange walked in a run, and with two outs, Regan Nash lined a single into left that would have tied the game with a close play at the plate, but the ball squirted by Aliyah Andrews and pinch runner Gabby Garrison crossed home to send the Tigers to 20-19, 3-9 in the Southeastern Conference.

"We came out Friday after the first game kind of bummed, because we knew we should have won it, and came out flat the second game," Nash said. "We came out this game knowing that we needed to do it and that we could do it."

LSU built a 4-0 lead by the fourth inning behind one of the nation's best pitchers in Hoover, who kept Missouri hitless in the first four innings, but the similarities started to pile up in the sixth inning.

With one out, Becca Schulte walked and Taryn Antoine doubled, and then Andrews hit a tapper to Amanda Sanchez at third. Sanchez threw out Andrews at first, and then Rylee Pierce gunned it down to Edwards at home, catching Schulte in the exact same rundown she scored from in the first game of the series. Schulte and Antoine both stood on third base and Edwards tagged each of them twice, and the third-base umpire held up his fist to signal the completed double play and the end of the away sixth.

Then, Cayla Kessinger led off the sixth inning, like she did in game one, with a solo home run to left center. Missouri players ran of the field loudly celebrating, energy renewed after the double play in the top of the inning, and the first indicator of that spark came from Kessinger's bat.

"I knew it. Second time through the lineup, I just knew, I was like, 'OK, we're on her, and something good is going to happen,'" Kessinger said. "Right before I went up to the plate, I looked at the dugout and I said, 'You guys, I don't know who it's going to be, but I have a really, really good feeling right now.' Because I knew. We were right on her every inning, we were just hitting it right to them."

Kessinger said it helped that the Tigers didn't have to face Allie Walljasper's killer change-up and Hoover's heat in the same game and allowed the hitters to get comfortable. By the seventh inning, Missouri's hitters knew the pitches they were looking for, knew they could hit Hoover, and she was unable to fool them.

Madi Norman did not get a decision in the start, but threw 5 innings on 85 pitches the day after throwing 10 innings and a career-high 146 pitches. She gave up three earned runs on 10 hits with two walks and a strikeout. Rice came on right before the double play in the sixth and threw 1 innings of hitless relief in the win.

This was a big win for Missouri, one that Nash and Kessinger said the team needed to win after they were so close Friday. The Tigers finished with three hits and five walks and found a way to win on a day in which Amanda Sanchez, Braxton Burnside and Rylee Pierce combined to go 0-of-8 with a walk. The win also validated the approach Fogue wanted her players to take.

"Early in the game we had a lot of strikeouts," Fogue said. "And I think it was (in) the fourth, I got the girls together and said, 'Look, we've just got to find a way to put the ball in play. Be willing to put the ball in play and make things happen, we've got to quit striking out, we've got to give ourselves a chance.' And after that, I think we only had two strikeouts the rest of the game."

Six of Hoover's eight strikeouts came in the first three innings, and Wilmes broke up the no-hit bid in the fifth with a perfectly placed bunt single in front of the hard-throwing righty.

The win was also big in terms of the end of the season. The SEC has 13 softball programs (Vanderbilt doesn't field a team) and the top 12 teams make the conference tournament at the end of the season, which Missouri hosts this year. Since the field expanded from 10 to 12 teams for the 2015 tournament, the host school has never failed to make the tournament. Missouri's win puts them a game up on Mississippi (16-14, 2-9 SEC) ahead of the Rebels' series finale at home against Auburn today.

Missouri plays at No. 6 Georgia next weekend.