Softball Splits Doubleheader With Southern Miss
May 07, 2005 | Softball
Harrell (29-11) overall pitched her 33rd complete game and 11th shut out of the season en route to leading the Pirates to their first-ever win in Hattiesburg. She scattered seven hits over nine innings and struck out 10 to improve to 8-1 on the year when fanning 10 or more batters.
Coupled with its loss and Louisville's two-game sweep of DePaul on Saturday, ECU (55-16, 17-6) finishes the regular season in third place and will be the No. 3 seed in next week's C-USA Tournament in Tampa which begins on Thursday.
Freshman Erin St. Ledger doubled to right-center field to leadoff the ninth and moved to third on sacrifice bunt. Fellow rookie was issued a one-out walk Laurel Carlson and junior Ashley Quick stole second base to put two runners in scoring position as Jessup came to the plate with two outs.
Jessup collected two of the Pirates' five hits during the game.
The Golden Eagles put the go-ahead run at third base with two outs in both the fifth and sixth inning, but Harrell struck out the final batter of each frame to keep the game tied.
With Harrell exhausted from a grueling game one, juniors Stephanie Hayes and Brently Bridgeforth toed the rubber in game two. Each pitcher tossed three innings with Hayes (13-3) suffering the loss after allowing five runs in the first three frames.
Southern Miss (27-30, 7-16) scored two runs in the first to take the early lead before the Pirates plated single runs in the second and third inning to tie the game. ECU benefited from one of four USM errors to plate its first run in the second before Kate Manuse smacked her league-leading 20th double to drive in her C-USA best 58 run of the season in the third.
Manuse was issued her 50th walk of the season in game one becoming the first player in school and C-USA history to reach that mark.
The Golden Eagles answered with three runs in the third to take command of the game behind three hits, a sacrifice bunt and one Pirate error.
USM pitchers limited the Pirates to just four hits in game two and a total of only seven hits in the two games combined.
Game three of the series is scheduled for a 1 p.m. EDT start Sunday.
