Mizzou softball opens the SEC tournament with a win. (photo/LSU Athletics)
Mizzou softball took care of Mississippi State behind patient at-bats and a brilliant pitching performance from Tori Finucane as the Tigers beat the Bulldogs 9-0 in the 2015 SEC Softball Tournament opening game. The Tigers run-rule win came off a walk-off home run by center-fielder Kirsten Mack in the bottom of the sixth inning.
Finucane threw a 50-strike, 79-pitch game across six innings striking out two batters and allowing just one hit.
MSU pitcher Alexis Silkwood held the Tigers to a 2-0 lead, but Mizzou pulled ahead 6-0 after a fifth inning grand slam by first baseman Kelsea Roth.  That homer snapped an 0 for 17 slump with the bases loaded.
“I didn’t know anything about that. Some things you just put in denial, I don’t know,” said head coach Ehren Earleywine.  “We found a way to beat a lot of good teams this year, regardless of the stats. We are playing our best softball right now. We
have a fresh pitcher going tomorrow. We will see what happens.”
Missouri faces Auburn tomorrow in the second round at 10:00 a.m. CT.
“I know everything about them. They are probably the best hitting team in the country. We should score
some runs. Can we score more than them? We don’t know,” said Earleywine. “I think one of the things is that we’ve kind of
narrowed our focus to over the last four or five games is just playing better defense. We swung the bats well. We’ve been getting good pitching as of late. We just haven’t made all of the plays, especially on
the infield. If we start doing that, we will be really hard to beat.”
