No. 18 Texas A&M Bumps McNeese State from NCAA Tournament
No. 18 Texas A&M 2, McNeese State 0
BATON ROUGE -McNeese State's Cowgirls couldn't get the hitting it needed at the right time and dropped a 2-0 decision to Texas A&M here Saturday, falling out of the NCAA regional softball tournament.
The loss was the second for the Cowgirls in the tournament as they had bowed to LSU by a 6-0 score on Friday.
In Saturday's opener UL-Lafayette defeated top seeded and host LSU 1-0 to move into the championship game. LSU was having to play Texas A&M in a late game Saturday with the winner advancing to play ULL on Sunday.
"It's a disappointing loss," said Cowgirl coach Natalie Poole who in only her second year at the McNeese helm has taken her team to the NCAAs. "We felt that we were going to come out and play a strong game but we just had to many fly ball hits. We wanted to have more hits on the ground. We just didn't get the offense that we wanted.
"Our vision this year was to get here (NCAAs). This is where we want to be."
McNeese won the Southland Conference post season tournament to get its berth in the NCAA regional's.
The Cowgirls had only three hits in Saturday's contest, all of them singles and two of them by leftfielder Claire Terracina.
Texas A&M, on the other hand, only had seven hits in the game and one of their runs was unearned.
McNeese closes out its season with a 38-27 record, the 38 wins being the most ever by a Cowgirl team.
Texas A&M, now 43-15, scored single runs in the second and fourth innings as Cowgirl pitcher Kayla Shepherd did a good job of holding the Aggies in check.
A pair of singles, a sacrifice and an error by Cowgirl third baseman Dani Price allowed A&M to score its run in the second inning while in the fourth, the Aggies loaded the bases on three straight singles and scored on a sacrifice fly.
McNeese had scoring opportunities in the first and third innings. After two were out in the first, Liz Morvant singled to get on first and then stole second. However, she was tagged out in a rundown between second and third.
In the third inning after one was out, Whitney Corbello walked, Terracina had a bunt single and Lindsey Langner reached on an error by the A&M second baseman. However, Morvant flew out to center and Molly Guidry struckout to end the threat.
Over the next four innings the Cowgirls only managed to get Terracina on base in the fifth inning with her second hit of the game.