| EMCC Lady Lions maintain share of division lead with home sweep of Delta |
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SCOOBA – Bidding for at least a share of the MACJC North Division softball championship, the Lady Lions of East Mississippi swept visiting Mississippi Delta, 6-1 and 5-1, Tuesday afternoon during ‘Sophomore Day’ festivities on the Scooba campus.
Coupled with Itawamba’s home sweep of Holmes on Tuesday, EMCC and ICC remain tied atop the division standings with identical 18-4 league marks. With one division series remaining in the regular season, Itawamba travels to last-place Coahoma for a Friday doubleheader, while the Lady Lions take on third-place Northwest Mississippi Monday in Senatobia. In the event of a first-place tie at the conclusion of the regular season, ICC would earn the right to host the upcoming MACJC State Softball Tournament (April 29-30) by having swept EMCC on the year. In their regular-season home finale, the 20-27 Lady Lions rode the 10-strikeout performance of sophomore Courtney Nunn to earn the 6-1 victory in Tuesday’s opener. The veteran right-hander from Jonesboro, La., brought a one-hit shutout into the final inning. However, the visitors opened the seventh with a bunt single by Alex Domino, who scored a batter later when pinch-hitter Miller Maddox’s base hit squirted under the glove of EMCC right fielder Courtney Castleberry. Nunn responded by retiring the next three hitters in order – two by strikeout – to preserve her 16th victory of the season. With nine hits in the opener, the Lady Lions used three hits in each of the first two innings to score one run in the first and two more in the second on RBI singles by Mallory Pace, Cayla Coleman and Celeste Fontenot. After plating two unearned tallies in the fifth, Coleman, of Meridian’s Clarkdale High School, capped a 3-for-4 outing with a run-scoring triple down the left field line in the sixth to close out the game’s scoring. The nightcap featured a pitching duel between EMCC freshman Nashedra Barry and Delta’s Miller Maddox, as both hurlers scattered five hits apiece in recording complete-game decisions. A dual-sport standout from Columbus High School, Barry struck out six and walked three in picking up her third win of the season. East Mississippi again struck early in the second game, pushing across two unearned runs in the first inning. After the Lady Trojans cut the deficit in half with an unearned run in the third, EMCC nearly batted around to produce three more runs in the home half of the third. Aided by a lead-off walk and a hit batsman, the Lady Lions used a run-scoring groundout by Nunn sandwiched between RBI singles from Leigh Ellen Barefield and Barry to account for the 5-1 outcome. Despite missing the first 20 games of the softball season because of her basketball responsibilities with the Lady Lions, Barry added to her team-leading RBI total (25) with a 2-for-3 effort in the nightcap. She also had a single with a run scored in the first game. |
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| Last Updated ( Wednesday, 21 April 2010 ) |
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