BATON ROUGE — Southern Miss took over the driver’s seat at the NCAA Regional at Baton Rouge by winning its second straight game, 14-1 over Hofstra Friday night.
Hofstra will face LSU in an elimination game Saturday at 1 p.m. Southern Miss will play the winner of that game at 7 p.m. Saturday.
Courtney Blades won her 48th game of the season against five losses. She allowed only one run on three hits while striking out nine (to give her 589 on the season).
Southern Miss opened up a 3-0 lead in the top of the second inning with a solo home run by catcher Kenya Peters, a pinch-hit RBI single by Tammy Edwards and another RBI single by Amy Berman.
The Lady Eagles picked up two more runs off of Hofstra starter Alicia Smith in the top of the third when Chrystal Stevens stole her 57th base in 60 attempts this season and then scored when Hofstra failed to cover the bag and allowed the throw down to go into left field.
The lead was extended to 5-0 when Peters singled down the left field line to score pinch runner Kendra Seals. Seals pinch ran for Jennifer Ford who doubled with one out.
Blades gave up her first home run since March 19 (181 innings, 32 games) in the bottom of the fourth when Lisa Ciaverdini hit her team-leading seventh home run of the season over the right-field wall to cut the lead to 5-1.
However, Blades got two more runs from her offense in the top of the fifth and one more in the sixth to put the game to rest at 8-1.
The Lady Eagles added six more in the top of the seventh.