Teammates congratulate Mizzou’s Kara Daly after she smashed her sixth home run of the season, in the Tigers’ Game 1 loss to Tennessee on Sunday. (Photo courtesy: Mizzou Athletics)
| Game 1 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | R | H | E |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tennessee | 4 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 3 | 5 | 14 | 13 | 1 |
| Mizzou | 0 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 4 | 0 |
W: Erin Edmoundson (10-1) L: Jordan Weber (5-1)
| Game 2 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | R | H | E |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tennessee | 1 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 5 | 4 | 1 |
| Mizzou | 0 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 4 | 8 | 2 |
W: Nicola Simpson (1-0) L: Laurin Krings (7-3) S: Erin Edmoundson (1)
by Cedric Williams
Senior Editor
Between the bad weather on Thursday, the game postponements of Friday and Saturday, and the eventual disappointing game action on Sunday, it turned out to be an all together bad opening weekend of Southeastern Conference play for the University of Missouri women’s softball team.
The Tigers came in having won four straight games and eight of their last nine. The Lady Vols were on a roll too, having won seven in a row, so the entire softball world was looking forward to the three-game set between eighth-ranked Missouri and 18th-ranked Tennessee.
But then bad weather hit the Columbia area on Thursday and forced Friday and Saturday’s games to be postponed. The SEC league office asked the teams to play a doubleheader on Sunday, and the teams agreed, so that was the backdrop for a highly anticipated day of softball at the Mizzou Softball Stadium.
Unfortunately for Mizzou fans, it was the Lady Vols that dominated the day on Sunday, and won both games of the doubleheader by the scores of 14-3 and 5-4.
Tennessee took control in the first inning of the first game, when it scored four runs on three hits off Mizzou starting pitcher Jordan Weber, with the big blow being a three-run home run off the bat of Lady Vol third baseman Zaida Puni.
The visitors from Knoxville then added two more runs in the third inning, before Missouri finally got on the board in the fourth, thanks to a solo homer by freshman Kara Daly.
It was the Jefferson City native’s sixth dinger of the season, and also her fifth straight game with a homer, making Daly the first player in Mizzou history to smash a home run in five straight games.
Two batters later, Riley Frizzell jacked a two-run bomb to make the score 6-3, and suddenly, Mizzou was back in the game.
All that was short-lived though, as Tennessee added three runs in the fifth inning and five more in the sixth, to close out a 14-3 run rule win over the Tigers.
In Game 2, Tennessee jumped ahead early again, with runs in each of the first four innings, including another home run by Puni, that put the Lady Vols ahead 5-0.
This time though, Mizzou put together a more fierce rally, with three runs in the bottom of the fourth and another in the fifth, to pull within a run at 5-4.
Unfortunately, that was as close as the Tigers would get before the Lady Vols closed out the game and headed back to Knoxville with a doubleheader sweep.
The two losses dropped Mizzou’s overall record to 16-6, and will also likely drop the Tigers to somewhere in the teens in the national top 25 rankings, which will be released on Tuesday.
Mizzou will be back in action on Wednesday, when it travels to Champaign, Ill., to play the Braggin’ Rights doubleheader against rival Illinois.
Following those two games, Mizzou will be back in Columbia next weekend to host the Mizzou Invitational against Northwestern, Ball State, and Stanford.
Weather permitting, the Tigers will play doubleheaders on each of those days with games against Northwestern and Ball State on Friday, Northwestern and Stanford on Saturday, and Ball State and Stanford on Sunday.
Mizzou’s next SEC game will be when it heads down south for a three-game set against Ole Miss, the weekend of March 25-27.