BATON ROUGE — After a nearly two-hour delay in getting started, the 19th-ranked LSU softball team soundly defeated Texas Southern, 12-0 and 19-0, both in five innings, at Tiger Park on Wednesday afternoon.
The games were delayed when the TSU Lady Tigers were caught in bad weather and traffic on their way to the field. The team arrived an hour and a half past the scheduled start time for the first game and game one eventually got underway at 5:50 p.m., pushed back from the 4 p.m. scheduled start time.
The Tigers improve upon their best start in school history and now stand at 14-0 on the year. The TSU Lady Tigers fell to 1-7 on the season with the two losses, their worst of the year.
“Mission accomplished,” said LSU head coach Yvette Girouard. “We got to play everybody and we worked on some things that we needed to work on. Now it’s on to much bigger and better things.”
Senior Lauren Castle led the team with matching 3-for-3 performances in each game, scoring five runs while knocking in four. Junior Leslie Klein also went 3-for-3 in the second game, posting a season-best five RBIs with a triples, after posting a 1-for-2 mark in the game one with two runs scored.
Senior Stephanie Hill also went 4-for-5 on the night, including a pair of doubles with two RBIs and three runs scored. In total, the Tigers recorded 31 runs on 32 hits, including nine doubles and two triples.
In the circle, Megan Jolly (3-0) earned the complete-game shutout win in the first game. She allowed only two hits with a walk and seven strikeouts. Tiffany Garcia (3-0) took the complete-game shutout in game two, allowing three hits with two walks, while striking out a career-best 11 batters.
The Tigers wasted no time in getting on the scoreboard, putting up seven runs in the bottom of the first inning of game one. LSU went on to add one in the second, three in the third and one in the fourth as they won, 12-0. Jolly faced only two over the minimum as Texas Southern had only one runner reach scoring position in the contest.
The second game played out in much the same way as the first. The Tigers scored five runs in the first before exploding for 12 runs in the second. That total tied for the second most runs scored in an inning by an LSU team in school history. The Tigers closed out the game with one in the third and one in the fourth for the 19-0 final.
Despite allowing only three hits, Garcia pitched her way out of a jam twice. In the top of the third inning, she faced two on with one out before coaxing a fielder’s choice to get the lead runner at third and a strikeout to end the inning. In the top of the fifth, she faced her toughest task. With one out, the Lady Tigers loaded the bases, their only runner to advance to third on the night. Garcia struck out the next batter before the final batter flew out to center field to end the game.
LSU now faces its toughest test of the season as the Tigers travel to the Palm Springs Classic this weekend. LSU will take on No. 3 UCLA and No. 11 Oregon State on Friday. After the Tigers face Texas Tech and UC-Santa Barbara on Saturday, LSU will close out the weekend against No. 6 Stanford on Sunday at 11 a.m. (CT) on ESPNU.