MOBILE, Ala.  – When Georgia State came back from an early 2-0 deficit and Sophie Mooney launched a two-run home run to tie the game, South Alabama pitcher Olivia Lackie didn’t get nervous.

“Someone asked if the home run fazed her,” USA coach Becky Clark said. “It made her mad.”

Lackie retired every hitter she faced the rest of the way, and her Jaguar teammates exploded for eight runs in the fourth inning – including home runs from Kamdyn Kvistad and Victoria Ortiz – in rolling to a 10-2, five-inning victory over the Panthers in Wednesday’s final game of the Sun Belt Conference Softball Championships.

The second-seeded Jaguars (25-19) broke the 2-2 tie with a six-run fourth inning, and Ortiz’ 11^th home run of the season provided the final two runs of USA’s most productive inning of the season. Lackie made that stand up by retiring the final three batters in the fifth inning for the run-rule victory.

“I was proud of our offense for picking her up, that was huge,” Clark said. “We talk about answering up and man, they answered up in a big way. At this time of year you have to be able to win a lot of different ways. You have to have pitching and defense, you’re going to win sometimes with that, sometimes you’re going to win with your speed, sometimes you’re going to win with your power. What was cool tonight was that we won with all of it.”

The host USA squad will face third-seeded Texas State in the winners’ bracket semifinals at 1 p.m. Thursday. Georgia State (20-32) will meet UT Arlington at 7 p.m. Thursday in an elimination game.

The Jaguars scored two runs without benefit of a hit in the first inning, with Kvistad’s sacrifice bunt and a following error plating Caroline Nichols and Mackenzie Brasher. However, Panther pitcher Hallie Adams (5-13) faced the minimum number over the next two innings, and with two outs in the fourth Georgia State’s Bailee Richardson singled – the first hit off Lackie – and Mooney followed with her fourth homer of the year for the 2-2 tie.

“She’s been doing well at the end for us, I’m glad to get that from her,” Georgia State coach Angie Nicholson said of Mooney. “And Bailee had the nice hit right in front of her, that was good to see and I thought we had some momentum change there … but not so much.”

Lackie (15-7) had retired the first 11 batters she faced, nine by strikeout, and finished up allowing only the two hits and fanning 11.
“She just does a nice job of spinning the ball, she attacks the plate well,” Nicholson said. “I just feel like we were letting pitches go by that we should have been swinging at, and then we got ourselves down and we’re chasing pitches.”

The Jaguars caught up to Adams in the fourth, when Ortiz led off with a single and Kvistad followed with a towering shot to right center field to give the hosts a 4-2 lead. Meredith Keel followed with a triple and Gabby Stagner and Kassidy Wilcox reached on a walk and a hit batsman before a pinch-hit single by Shelby Sloan and a pinch-hit double by Abby Allen plated four runs.

“I was happy to see tonight that we got production from all areas, and we got great production off the bench,” Clark said. “We had some great at-bats coming off the bench that did some big stuff for us. You get production out of the top of the order and out of the bottom of the order, you’re going to win that way.”