Walk-Off Dinger Lifts Tigers Over Arkansas, 2-1
BATON ROUGE – The LSU softball team defeated Arkansas in walk-off fashion after a home run in the seventh inning gave the Tigers the 2-1 victory in Tiger Park. With the win, LSU improves to 38-13 on the year and 11-10 in conference play, while Arkansas falls to 37-12 and 12-10 in the SEC.
The game was tied 1-1 heading into the bottom of the seventh inning when Amanda Doyle hit a solo home run to give the Tigers their 11th walk-off win of the season, and her fifth of the year.
The Tigers got on the board first in the first inning after Emily Griggs hit a double to right-center field to score Taryn Antoine from second base, giving LSU the early 1-0 lead. They had a chance to extend that lead, but left the bases loaded after a pop up and a fly ball to the left fielder, ending the inning.
The Razorbacks were tied the game up at one apiece after a lead-off solo home run to center field in the top of the fifth inning, but that was all they would get as senior Allie Walljasper shut them down for her 14th win of the year.
Walljasper struck out three in a complete-game effort. It was her 12th complete game of the season.
Torina’s Thoughts
On Amanda Doyle‘s walk-off home run…
“I’m very confident in Amanda. I know we’ve been in this situation a lot, and we’d rather not be in this situation, but I am confident that Amanda and our team know what to do because we’ve been here before.”
On the Tigers’ offense …
“If you look at Arkansas’ pitcher, she’s really good. Overall, I think the fact that we got 10 hits is really huge. Their pitcher is capable of making good pitches, and we saw that in some situations today, but we need to do a better job when we’re in a scoring position.”
AMANDA DOYLE
On her fifth walk-off hit …
“It feels great. I was put into a big situation a few innings earlier and I didn’t deliver so I knew that I had to get on base. I knew I had to get something started.”
Notes
>> With the win, now has 11 walk-off victories on the year.
>> The Tigers are now 9-1 when the game is tied after six innings, 30-3 at home in Tiger Park and are 36-2 when holding the opponent to two runs or less.
>> LSU extended their all-time series lead over Arkansas to 57-9.
>> With her home run, Doyle now has seven dingers, and five walk-off hits this season.
>> LSU tallied 10 total hits on the night. Doyle led the charge with three followed by Aliyah Andrews, Taryn Antoine, and Griggs who each had two.
On Deck
Next up, LSU will take on Arkansas on Saturday, May 5 at 6 p.m. CT for the second game of the series in Tiger Park. The game will be broadcast online only on the SEC Network+.
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