BATON ROUGE- The Illinois State softball team jumped out to an early 2-0 lead over No. 5 LSU, but the Tigers offense made a comeback in the middle innings to defeat ISU, 10-2, in five innings Friday night at LSU in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
“We’ve started slow in some games this season,” said head coach Melinda Fischer. “However, tonight we got off to a great start with the two runs in the first inning, but LSU slowly got their bats back into it. The four-run fourth inning is what hurt us.”
Illinois State opened the scoring with a pair of runs in the top of the first inning. Annie Heineman walked to start the game and Riley Hale reached on an error in the next at-bat. With two runners on, Riley Strandgard hit a hot shot to second that was mishandled. The error allowed both Heineman and Hale to score to give ISU the lead.
Regan Romshek worked a perfect first inning, but surrendered a run in the bottom of the second to cut the ISU lead in half. Taylor Satchell drove in the Tiger run with a single through the right side of the infield.
The Tigers struck again in the bottom of the third inning when Kellsi Kloss launched a three-run homer over the left field fence to give LSU its first lead of the game, 4-2. LSU tacked on one more run in the inning and all five runs were scored with two outs in the frame.
The Redbird offense threatened in the top of the fourth as Allison Spence and Payton Billups hit back-to-back singles and worked their way into scoring position. However, ISU was unable to get either player home as a pair of groundouts ended the inning.
LSU’s offense jumped on Illinois State early in the bottom of the fourth. Sandra Simmons led off the frame with a single and Constance Quinn tripled to right field to bring her home. Leading 6-2, Kloss came to the plate again with two runners on and hit another three-run homer to give LSU a seven run lead.
The Redbirds went down in order in the top of the fifth and LSU scored one more run in the bottom of the inning to extend the lead to eight and win by run-rule.
The loss drops Illinois State to 3-8 on the season. The Redbird offense totaled three hits on the evening with Billups, Spence and Hale accounting for them. Romshek took the loss in the circle for ISU and falls to 0-3 on the season.
The Redbirds will play two games Saturday. ISU takes on Texas Tech at 12 p.m. and No. 5 LSU at 2:30 p.m. Both games will be broadcast live on GoRedbirds.com.
