BATON ROUGE — The third complete-game effort of the weekend by Emily Turner led the LSU softball team to the three-game Southeastern Conference sweep of Ole Miss with a 4-2 win on Sunday afternoon at Tiger Park.
With their first SEC series sweep of the season, the Tigers improved to 26-15 on the year and 9-12 in league play. The loss dropped the Rebels to 25-22 overall and 5-14 in conference action. LSU remains in sixth place in the league standings, four and a half games behind Auburn in fifth with a three-game series at AU next weekend.
“This is what it feels like to sweep a series,” said LSU head coach Yvette Girouard. “We kind of forgot a little bit. We went to bed happy last night and we’ll go to bed happy again tonight.
“The kids were very focused,” Girouard said. “We got runs when we needed to get them. This is a good Ole Miss team that does not give up a lot of runs. In every SEC series, yes they are getting beat, but the runs are few and far between and hard to come by. It’s tough to run-rule them or beat them by much.”
For the third time in two days, Turner recorded the complete-game win for LSU to improve to 14-9 on the season. She allowed two unearned runs on two hits with a walk and 10 strikeouts, her fourth double-figure strikeout effort this season. For the series, she went 3-0, allowing three runs, one earned, with nine hits and one walk with 24 strikeouts in 21 innings.
“Emily was dominating,” said Girouard. “I think that is probably the best she’s pitched since she’s been in a Tiger uniform. That is the talent that we recruited and finally you saw it. She’s been close a lot of times.
“It’s been a long process of teaching her how to be a pitcher and not a thrower and everything that entails – taking care of herself, taking care of her arm, the mental game, just a little bit of everything,” Girouard continued. “She’s been picked apart by umpires and by coaches and, to her credit, it could have broken her, but it didn