With the loss, the Cougars’ season comes to an end at 27-22, their first winning campaign since 2006. Cal Baptist, meanwhile, moves on to the tournament championship series against No. 4 Point Loma Nazarene University with the eventual winner garnering the GSAC’s automatic bid into the NAIA Championship Tournament.
Azusa Pacific mustered just 4 hits off a trio of Lancer pitchers today, and none was bigger than junior Bre Anderson’s 2-run home run to left center to tie the game at 2-2 with 1 out in the top of the fifth. It was Anderson’s first collegiate round-tripper, and it changed the complexion of the game.
The Lancers, who defeated Azusa Pacific, 3-0, in yesterday’s game 1 of the series, took a 2-0 lead on Nikki Lowe’s 2-out single up the middle to score Nina Cabrales and Briana Corral in the third inning. Lancer pitcher Emma Holden kept the Cougars off-balance and was in command of the game until yielding her first hit, Anderson’s bomb that also scored Nicole Llorens, who reached on a fielder’s choice earlier in the inning.
The Cougars never mounted a real threat to score before going into extra innings. Cal Baptist put a runner at third with 2 outs in the bottom of the seventh, but Cougar pitcher Camille Hundley, who continually came through in clutch situations, did so again by forcing Lowe, the GSAC Player of the Year, to foul out and send the game into extra innings.
Azusa Pacific appeared to have taken a 3-2 lead in the top of the eighth when the Cougars pulled off a successful suicide squeeze that plated Bailey Blazek. Blazek started the inning at second base to comply with the international tie-break rule that the GSAC follows during the regular season. As Cal Baptist came to the plate in the bottom half of the inning, the game umpires were alerted to a rule that applies to NAIA postseason play stating that no game will be limited by time nor apply the international tie-break rule. Thus Azusa Pacific’s eighth inning was negated, and the Cougars had to replay their top half of the eighth without a runner starting at second base. They got a lead off single which was later erased on an attempted steal of second base to end the inning.
Azusa Pacific’s best chance to break the tie came in the ninth when Cougars occupied first and third with 2 outs. A ground out, however, ended the threat and the inning.
Hundley showed signs of fatigue when she walked 2 batters in the bottom of the tenth. A 1-out fielding error allowed the bases to be loaded, and Nicole Shoemaker ended the game with an opposite-field stroke that had the ball bounce off the top of the fence and back into the field of play, easily scoring Lowe from third base with the game-winning run.
Hundley struck out 7 to finish the season with 181 strike outs, the second highest season total in program history. She closes the season with a 14-11 record. Tory Ferreira picked up the win with 1.2 innings of relief work to run her record to a perfect 20-0.
