#5 Winthrop Eliminates #6 Radford, Advances to Thursday
After dropping its opening game 5-4 to fourth-seeded Charleston Southern earlier in the day, Winthrop bounced back to defeat Radford 5-0 in an elimination game to move on to the second day of the Big South Conference Softball Championship.
The Eagles are now 25-30 overall and advance to play an opponent to be determined on Thursday at 5 p.m. in another elimination game. The Eagles will play the lowest seed among the losing teams in the first two games of the day on Thursday.
Kiley Majette threw a complete game shutout as she scattered eight hits with three walks and four strikeouts to improve to 14-16 on the year.
"What a great game we played," said Winthrop co-head coach
Mark Cooke, referring to the 5-0 win over Radford. "Kiley did a good job getting outs whenever they got runners on. She worked her way out of everything. We put the ball in play a lot. We're happy and very excited to be playing tomorrow. The first game was a tough one to lose, especially when you load the bases in the 7
th inning with no outs and don't score. Besides the first inning I thought we played really well. We fought back and played hard. We got runners in scoring position but we couldn't drive them in."
Winthrop grabbed a 2-0 lead in the third inning thanks to a two-RBI single by
Maddie Antone. The Eagles added some insurance in the fifth inning with three more runs. The Eagles loaded the bases with no outs and the first run of the inning scored on a
Morgan Lowers single to left.
Leah Young reached on a fielder's choice as she laid down a squeeze and all runners were safe for a 4-0 lead.
Ansley Gilreath's sacrifice fly to center made it 5-0.