LAKELAND, Fla. – On the journey of finding their third conference win of the season, the Eckerd College softball team fell to the Florida Southern Moccasins, 1-0, in the first game of their Sunshine State Conference series Friday night at Barnett Field. The Moccasins improve to 17-12 over all and 3-4 in the conference, while the Tritons drop to 10-21-1 over all and 2-5 in the SSC.
The game was scoreless for the first few innings until the Mocs struck first in the bottom of third inning. Florida Southern's Dani Blake led things off with a slap-base hit up the middle. The next two batters bunted their way on base to make it a bases loaded inning. With no outs, Elli Powell placed a base hit to the left side to bring home Blake to make the score 1-0. The Mocs made attempts to bring their other runners home, but the Eckerd defense buckled down to get out of the bases-loaded jam.
Florida Southern's starting pitcher Brittaney Alderman held the Tritons to just one hit, who came off the bat of Emma Docking, who had a base hit up the middle in the first inning. She pitched seven innings, surrendered one hit, while walking one batter and striking out four. Alex Sasso suffered the less for the Tritons, pitching six innings while giving up nine hits, one run, and striking out four batters.
The Tritons will close out the series with Florida Southern tomorrow as they return to Barnett Field to take on the Mocs in double-header action. The first game is set to start at 1:00 pm.
