BATON ROUGE — Senior pitcher Britni Sneed fired her fifth shutout in as many starts on Sunday to lead LSU to a 4-0 victory over Florida at Tiger Park.
The win moved Sneed to 7-4 this season while the Tigers improved to 18-5, including a 3-0 Southeastern Conference mark. Florida dropped to 12-17 and 0-3 in the league.
“There were a lot of split series’ this weekend in the SEC, so it is good that we jumped out to a 3-0 start,” said LSU coach Yvette Girouard.
While Sneed extended one streak, she saw another one come to an end. In the second inning she failed to strikeout a Gator batter, marking the first time in 41 innings the All-American did not fan at least one batter.
“We know we have a good one-two punch at the pitcher position with Britni and Kristin Schmidt.” said Girouard. “We feel like if we can give either of them just two runs then we will win the ball game.”
The run support came in the form of a three-run fifth and a one-run sixth.
In the fifth, Erin Johnson led off with a walk before Florida pulled pitcher Mandy Schuerman in favor of Amanda Moore. Despite allowing just one hit and one run, Schuerman took the loss to fall to 2-5.
Johnson beat the throw to second on Sara Fitzgerald’s sacrifice bunt to give the Tigers runners on first and second with no outs. With Blair Smith at the plate, Moore let loose a wild pitch to move both runners in scoring position.
Smith was then sent to the bench as Girouard put in Leigh Ann Danos to pinch hit. Danos responded with a two-run double to left field. After Smith re-entered to run for Danos, Jennie Reeves drew a walk and moved to second on Trena Peel’s grounder back to the circle.
“We were going to bunt to move the runners and Blair is a better bunter than Leigh Ann. But then when the wild pitch happened, we didn’t need to bunt anymore,” noted Giroaurd.
Smith was tagged out at home trying to score on Jessica Braggins fielder’s choice, which allowed Reeved to advance to third. She then came home on Julie Wiese’s single through the left side.
Megann Steege singled to start the sixth and went to second on another Moore wild pitch. She came around to score on Aleshia Perry’s infield single.