NCAA softball tournament: UK routs Notre Dame to force winner-take-all battle
Kentucky’s softball team came into Sunday with its season on the line. The Wildcats played like it.
After falling 12-3 to Notre Dame on Saturday, the Wildcats romped against the Fighting Irish 7-0 to force a winner-take-all championship game in the NCAA softball tournament’s Lexington Regional. That game was scheduled to begin at about 3 p.m. Sunday.
UK is seeking its fourth straight Super Regional appearance and seventh in the last eight years. Notre Dame has never advanced to a Super Regional.
Autumn Humes pitched a complete game for the Wildcats, allowing three hits and no walks on just 65 pitches. Notre Dame’s duo combined to give up 11 hits and three walks on 141 pitches.
Two outs followed a walk by Kayla Kowalik to lead off the game, but Erin Coffel scored her on a single to right, igniting a four-run first for the “visiting” Wildcats. Coffel scored on a double by Mallory Peyton, who soon after went back to the dugout on a center-field shot by Renee Abernathy, her 11th of the season.
Another early pitching change by the Fighting Irish, who opted for a similar strategy in the first meeting, didn’t immediately have the desired outcome. Alexis Holloway, whom UK tagged for four hits and three runs before Morgan Ryan relieved her with just one out in the first inning Saturday, gave up four hits and two runs in relief of starter Payton Tidd in the second frame.
Holloway settled down from there, surrendering just two hits over the next three frames before a two-out solo shot by Tatum Spangler in the top of the sixth. The Fighting Irish never helped her out at the plate, however: there without a baserunner until the fourth, which it led off with back-to-back singles that prompted a meeting in the UK circle. A fielder’s choice tag-out at third and consecutive fly outs ended the Fighting Irish’s only credible threat of the game.
Emmy Blane, a former standout for Christian County High School, ended the contest with a diving takeaway in shallow right.
