The Ole Miss softball team might be back to winning. After losing a series to the LSU Tigers last weekend, 2-1, the Rebels stepped up to defeat the University of Central Arkansas Bears on Tuesday, April 6 with a final score of 4-1.
On Tuesday night in Oxford, the Rebels clashed against a hot Central Arkansas team that had won its last eights games in a row. An early error by the team caused the Bears to score a run early, but the Rebels rallied within the inning and scored three straight runs thanks to sophomore Paige Smith’s double and freshman Blaise Biringer’s stinger up the middle.
Biringer later hit a within-the-park home run to give the Rebels insurance, and thanks to junior Savannah Diedrich coming in the mound to relieve senior Anna Borgen in pitching, Ole Miss came away on top of the Bears. This gave Diedrich her first save of the season, and Ole Miss won, 4-1.
During the LSU series, the pitching mound for the Rebels performed quite well. On Friday, Borgen pitched for over seven innings with only nine hits allowed. The bats couldn’t rally, and the game went into an extra inning as LSU loaded the bases and hit a single that would bring the only run home for the Tigers, winning 1-0.
On Saturday, the pitching continued to be fairly decent as Diederich only allowed three runs on six hits, with four strikeouts in her pocket. However, the bats still couldn’t find their stride in Baton Rouge.
On both Friday and Saturday, the Rebels left ten base runners out in the field and couldn’t find a way to bring enough of them back home to prevail against the Tigers. LSU went on to win a tight battle, 3-2.
Though the series was lost, Ole Miss showed heart on Sunday as they used an electric rally late in the game to take one game win home with them and stop the Tigers from getting the sweep. Tied up at 4-4 at the bottom of the seventh, the team went into an extra inning with a chip on their shoulder. The Rebels scored an impressive five runs in the top of the eighth inning, which proved an insurmountable lead for LSU to try and keep up, giving Ole Miss the 9-4 win.
The win on Sunday and the rally on Tuesday are very notable for this Rebel team. Winning on the road in the SEC is tough, especially in Baton Rouge against a top-15 team. Preventing a sweep on Sunday with a win is worth keeping their heads up with the team continuing to be excited for the rest of their season.
The Rebels will be back home this weekend and will look to get back to their winning ways, with their first pitch in their series against South Carolina coming at you Friday, April 9 at 6 p.m., televised on the SEC Network.
