MOBILE, Ala. – Georgia State’s softball team has used its speed for much of the 2022 season. It took a while, but the Panthers finally got the running game going midway through its Tuesday elimination game at the Sun Belt Conference Softball Championships.
The Panthers had six stolen bases in the final three innings, along with 10 hits in the fourth, fifth and sixth frames, and used that late uprising to take a run-rule 9-1 victory over state rival Georgia Southern and advance into the double-elimination segment of the tournament.
Georgia State (20-31) broke a scoreless tie with three runs in the fourth, and then had five steals one inning later in pushing across two more runs.
“That’s what we do,” said Georgia State head coach Angie Nicholson, whose team advances to face No. 2 seed and tournament host South Alabama in Wednesday’s 7 p.m. game. “That’s really part of our game. We spent all fall working on it. It was nice executing it, getting it done and letting it show everything we’ve been working on. They (the players) were all yelling as we were doing things, ‘we work on it every day.’”
The nine late runs came in support of starting pitcher Emily Buck (8-7), who checked the Eagles on three hits and one run in five innings of work before Hallie Adams came on to pitch the final inning. Buck stranded four runners before surrendering a run without a hit in the fifth inning on Courtney Ball’s sacrifice fly.
That came after Buck was hit in her pitching mask by a line drive off the bat of Georgia Southern’s Janai Conklin, the game’s second batter. After being checked out, Buck stayed in the game and allowed only three singles in her five innings.
“That scared me when she took that ball to the chin there,” Nicholson said. “I did not know where it hit her, so when I first went out there it was like, speak to me, speak to me. She said she was okay. She has been Steady Eddie for us, we know what we’re going to get from her. She’s a senior, she’s a veteran and she’s been really consistent.”
“We came in there the first inning, had some good hard hits, Janai hit that ball off her chin and we still can’t knock her out of the game,” said Georgia Southern coach Sharon Perkins. “So props to Buck for sticking with it and pitching a good game.”
The Eagles (13-34) put two runners on base in the second and loaded the bases in the sixth before two popups ended the final threat.
“Timely hitting, that’s kind of been our issue all year,” Perkins said.
Georgia Southern starter Rylee Waldrep (6-14) did not allow an earned run, but the Panthers scored three times in the fourth on a walk, a wild throw on Skylar Chavez’ sacrifice bunt that scored Daisy Hess, an RBI ground ball from Gabby Benson and an RBI double from Emily Brown. Chavez then plated a run on a squeeze bunt in the fifth before Sophie Mooney scored on a double steal.
Georgia State ended the game with four runs in the sixth on five hits off relievers Kastin Belogorska and Kyleigh Richardson, including Bailee Richardson’s RBI double, an RBI single from Mooney for her third hit of the game, and Carolyn Deady’s game-ending single that scored Hess.
“We’d been struggling offensively,” Nicholson said, “so it was just good to have some bats come alive. That’s always a concern because we really have kind of ridden the roller coaster. When your pitcher’s pitching a great game, you just want to support her. We had a great warmup in the cages and I told them, you guys look great in the cages, let’s just do it on the field.”