AUBURN, Ala. - Auburn (24-15-1, 6-12) defeats No. 23 Kentucky (29-16) Monday night. The win prevents the sweep for the Wildcats. The Tigers struggled offensively on Saturday and Sunday before waking up Monday. The Tigers did lose the series after dropping the first two. These losses definitely hurt the Tigers as the Wildcats now stand ahead of Auburn in the SEC and own the tiebreaker.
"I didn't feel like either team really had control of the game," said Auburn head coach Mickey Dean. "We had our chances to take control but couldn't capitalize. We just didn't do enough offensively to put pressure on Kentucky.
Auburn lost the first game of the Series on Friday night by a score of 5-2. This game was a weird one. There were over 2 hours of combined rain delays. Shelby Lowe pitched the first 4 scoreless on her senior night. However, after a rain delay lasted an hour and a half she couldn’t stay warm and Maddie Penta surrendered 5 runs in the final three innings.
In game two, Maddie Penta flourished as she threw over 100 pitches despite pitching 3 innings the night before. However, the bats just simply could not help her out. Kentucky’s Sydney Lagdon pitched 5 perfect innings before an impressive home run from Amelia Lech.
The bats woke up in game 3 on Monday night, as the Auburn Tigers won 4-1 over the Wildcats to take the final game of the series. Starting pitching continued to shine as Shelby Lowe pitched a complete game on an insane 122 pitches.
Auburn’s pitching was the bright spot this weekend; the starters allowed a combined 2 runs over 11 innings, while limiting a Kentucky offense that ranks at the top of the SEC in HR and slugging percentage.
Maddie Penta deserves a lot of praise this weekend for pitching quality inning after quality inning on both Friday and Saturday night. She striked out 12 batters while only walking 4 this weekend.
"It comes down to timely hitting," said Dean. "The team that gets the timely hits wins the ball game. They got it, and we didn't."
Dean put it best, the team that gets hits at the right time wins, and the Tigers just struggled to accomplish that most of this weekend. Despite scoring 2 runs off of errors on Friday night, Auburn remained hitless until the 6th where they left the bases loaded, ultimately costing them the game.
While the bats did struggle to start the weekend off, Amelia Lech hit her team-leading 10th HR, and Makayla Packer hit her 2nd HR on Monday night. Another bright spot was seeing Freshman Mariah Penta single in the sixth inning of Friday’s game, providing a bright spot for the future of Auburn softball.
With the season dwindling down Auburn will look to find some late season heroics as they visit Alabama next weekend. The Tigers will look to make up some ground against a low seeded Crimson Tide squad as the SEC tournament quickly approaches.
The series will begin on Thursday night and be on ESPNU. The first pitch is scheduled for 7:00 PM CT.
