University of South Carolina Upstate Athletics
Ole Miss
Upstate Suffers First Losses of Season To Ole Miss, Tulsa
2/28/2009 12:00:00 AM | Softball
Feb. 28, 2009
Box Score - Ole Miss
Box Score - Tulsa
Oxford, Miss. - In a constant rain and with the temperatures not reaching much above freezing Saturday morning, Upstate and Ole Miss resumed its game that had been halted at 1-1 in the first inning Friday evening. In the end, Upstate allowed four unearned runs and lost its first game of the season, 10-4, to the Rebels. The Spartans dropped their second-straight game in a 5-2 loss to Tulsa in a game that began with a mixture of rain and a few snow flurries Saturday at noon Eastern.
Upstate fell to 8-2 on the year and will travel back to Spartanburg with Sunday's game against Ole Miss already called off due to the 3-5 inches of snow forecasted for the Oxford, Miss., area. The Spartans will head to Rock Hill, S.C., Tuesday to take on Winthrop in a doubleheader starting at 2:00 p.m. The game pits old friends against each other as Upstate's head coach, Chris Hawkins, and Winthrop's head coach, Mark Cooke, are longtime friends. Cooke gave Hawkins his start in coaching when he was the head coach at Upstate from 1987-89. Upstate returns home Thursday to take on UNC Wilmington in a doubleheader beginning at 2:30 p.m. at Cyrill Stadium.
"I guess we are not a very good team playing in driving rain and freezing temperatures," said Upstate head coach Chris Hawkins. "All of the teams had to play in that weather, but the conditions were brutal. It would have been nice to play those two teams in decent weather so that we could have gotten a better idea of where we stand with them. Still, we had our chances and we just didn't execute like we had in the previous eight games. We will learn from these losses and move on to Winthrop on Tuesday."
The Ole Miss (11-6) game began at 5:30 p.m. (Eastern) Friday evening, but rain halted the game with the score tied at one in the bottom of the first. The game resumed at 10:00 a.m. (Eastern) Saturday morning with Ole Miss batting and the bases loaded with one out. Upstate starter Amber Hamilton got out of the inning, though, after getting a force out at home and a ground out on the next two batters.
Hamilton was not as fortunate in the second inning as the Rebels plated three runs to open a 4-1 lead. Lisda Conchos had a sacrifice fly, Alyssa McGovern scored on a wild pitch and Amber Tramp drove in a run with an RBI-single to do the damage. Hamilton was lifted and replaced by Brittany Rice who got out of the inning with no further damage.
Upstate got back into the game with two runs in the third inning on Monica Hall's two-run homer and tied the game at four in the fourth on Heidi Gibbs' RBI-single. However, Ole Miss took the lead for good with a pair of runs in the bottom of the fourth on Lauren Grill's two-run home run. The Rebels added four earned runs in the sixth inning for the final 10-4 margin.
Rice (0-1), seeing her first action of the season, gave up two earned runs to suffer the loss. She scattered six hits in 4 2/3 innings. Lindsey Perry (3-2) took the win for Ole Miss, while Becky Nye earned the save. Gibbs, Chewning and Hall each tallied two hits to lead Upstate at the plate.
Tulsa (9-1) jumped on Upstate early by plating two runs in each of the first and second innings to open a 4-0 lead heading to the third. Lauren Lindsay scored on a wild pitch in the first and Vanessa Vice followed with an RBI-single. Lindsay and Christian Timmons hit back-to-back homers in the second to give Tulsa a 4-0 lead.
Upstate battled back with a run in each of the third and fourth innings to cut the Tulsa lead to 4-2. Upstate struck in the third, but the damage could have been worse. The Spartans loaded the bases with one out when pinch runner Melissa Lockey scored on a throwing error by the Golden Hurricane first baseman. However, Tulsa induced a force out at home on Upstate's next at bat and the Golden Hurricanes recorded a strikeout for the final out of the inning to limit the damage. Amber Patterson hit a leadoff home run in the fourth to get Upstate with two, but that's all that the Spartans would get the rest of the game.
Tulsa added a run to its lead in the fifth inning. Morgan Childers (7-1) struck out four and allowed four earned runs for her first loss of the year. Despite giving up five runs overall, she scattered just four hits. Jackie Lawrence went the distance for Tulsa to pick up the win, striking out eight Spartan hitters.
