Two freshmen battled it out in the pitching circle in the Northwestern State softball team’s midweek matchup with visiting Louisiana Tech on Tuesday.
NSU’s Kaymie Chandler and Louisiana Tech’s Laney Johnson put up five scoreless innings to start the game, each scattering five hits during that time and stranding a handful of runners on each side.
Ultimately it was the Bulldogs’ propensity for finding a way to win close games, with four wins in one-run games during their current nine-game winning streak, that led to a 3-0 victory at the Demon Diamond.
Tech (20-11) broke through with a run in the sixth and pushed across two insurance runs in the top of the seventh. Northwestern (3-28) got the tying run to the plate in the bottom of the seventh but couldn’t produce a last-chance comeback.
“We’re playing teams close, and we just can’t put them away in the sixth or seventh inning,” first-year Demons’ coach Jenny Fuller said. “We’re going toe-to-toe with them one through five. Kaymie did a great job, kept us in the game and then I think she just got a little tired.
“Our hitting can’t be off when our pitchers are on and our pitchers can’t be off when our hitting is on. We have to be able to put it all together and we’re just struggling a little bit to do that right now. “But if we keep playing hard, then I think eventually we’ll get those wins.”
Making her sixth start of the season, Chandler relied on her defense while notching just two strikeouts. Chandler escaped a jam in the fourth inducing a ground ball to short that Camryn Becnel fielded, tagged the runner and threw to first for an inning-ending double play.
Chandler threw 5 1/3 innings scattering six hits while allowing just one earned run.
Her shutout pitching most of the night was matched by Johnson for the Bulldogs, who stranded two runners in the first and fourth innings.
“We have been leaving a lot of runners on base,” Fuller said. “We did a lot of hitting yesterday, so I thought maybe it would be a little bit better, especially after we’ve seen that pitcher before, but, you know, that’s the way offense goes. You’ll leave runners on sometimes. We just got to keep chipping away.”
An infield single to short and a pair of walks loaded the bases with one out for the Bulldogs in the sixth inning and a grounder to shortstop produced the game’s first run on a fielders’ choice.
Tech added a pair of insurance runs in the seventh without the ball ever leaving the infield thanks to two hit batters, a bunt single, three stolen bases and two walks.
A single and a walk brought the tying run to the plate in the bottom of the inning but a ground ball to second stranded the final two runners of the game for the Demons, who go on the road this weekend for a Southland Conference series at East Texas A&M, the team closest to NSU in the SLC standings.
