{"id":72941,"date":"2023-05-04T08:03:29","date_gmt":"2023-05-04T13:03:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/?p=72941"},"modified":"2023-05-04T08:03:31","modified_gmt":"2023-05-04T13:03:31","slug":"uco-beats-fhsu-softball-in-miaa-tourney","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/?p=72941","title":{"rendered":"UCO beats FHSU softball in MIAA tourney"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By FHSU SPORTS INFORMATION<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

TOPEKA, Kan. – Fort Hays State and No. 4 ranked Central Oklahoma battled to a 2-2 tie through five innings in the opening round of the MIAA Tournament on Wednesday (May 3) at the Envista Softball Complex. However, a game-changing home run in the sixth allowed the No. 1 seeded Bronchos to pull away late, winning 8-2 over the No. 8 seeded Tigers. UCO improved to 44-6 overall on the season, while the Tigers moved to 31-23 and will battle to stay alive in the tournament on Thursday morning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Tigers cashed in on a shaky performance in the circle by Jordyn Pipkin at the beginning of the game. Peyton Shepard<\/a><\/dfn> drew a walk to open the game, moved up on a sacrifice bunt by Sarah Tiffany<\/a><\/dfn>, stole third base, then came in to score on a wild pitch. FHSU drew three walks in the inning, but was unable to find a hit to do further damage and led 1-0 after a half inning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

UCO evened up the game in the bottom of the second on a solo home run by Shayla Harper, but Loren Beggs<\/a><\/dfn>responded in the top of the third with a solo blast of her own to put the Tigers back on top 2-1. A Regan Curry<\/a><\/dfn>double chased Pipkin from the pitching circle, as Terin Ritz relieved her the rest of the way. The Tigers had a tough time solving Ritz the rest of the way as a Reese Curry<\/a><\/dfn>single in the fourth was the only hit she surrendered. Ritz retired the final 11 Tigers she faced in the game.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Miscommunication in the outfield allowed UCO to get the score knotted at 2-2 in the bottom of the third. What should have been the third out of the inning with no runs allowed turned into an RBI triple with a ball falling between Tiger defenders near the wall.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

UCO broke through with a big blow in the bottom of the sixth when a seeing-eye single up the middle and a swinging dribbler that was just effective as a bunt put two on for UCO. Mikayla Rutland followed with a three-run homer pushing UCO ahead by three at 5-2. Bailey Carlson<\/a><\/dfn>relieved Savanah Egger<\/a><\/dfn> at that point, but eventually surrendered three straight singles with two outs and a pair of bases loaded walks that allowed the lead to grow to the eventual final of 8-2.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Egger struck out two in her 5.2 innings of work. She moved to 14-9 on the season. Ritz got the victory in 4.2 innings of relief for UCO, now 18-1 on the season.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fort Hays State will face Washburn on Thursday morning (May 4) at 11 a.m. in the first elimination game of the tournament. The Ichabods are the No. 5 seed in the tournament and fell in the opening round to No. 4 seed Central Missouri.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By FHSU SPORTS INFORMATION TOPEKA, Kan. – Fort Hays State and No. 4 ranked Central Oklahoma battled to a 2-2 tie through five innings in… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4541,7349],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-72941","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-softball-sports","category-sports"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72941","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=72941"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72941\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":72942,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72941\/revisions\/72942"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=72941"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=72941"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=72941"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}