LAKELAND â€" The top of the lineup kept getting on base, and Elli Howell just kept driving them in. With the top five players in the batting order all picking up at least three hits, Howell had a total of six RBI in the doubleheader as 16th-ranked Florida Southern finished off a series sweep of Lynn with 10-0 and 4-2 victories on Friday.
Howell had five RBI in the first game when she doubled and had two sacrifice flies in her three trips to the plate. She added an RBI single in game two to give the Moccasins (36-11, 14-4) a late insurance run as they won for the ninth time in the last 10 games.
In all but one of those games, Florida Southern has scored in the first inning and they did so in both games Friday. In the opener, the Mocs loaded the bases with one out on a single by Peggy Alex, a fielder’s choice where the Knights were unable to record an out, and a base hit by Angela Williams. Natalie Lang brought in Alex with a single to right before Howell hit the first pitch she saw for a bases-clearing double.
Up 4-0, the Mocs added to their total in the third inning when Lindsey Powell singled, moved to second on a bunt by Williams, took third on another single by Lang, and came home on a deep fly ball by Howell.
The Moccasins then scored five times in the bottom of the fourth, starting with an RBI triple by Alex, who in turn scored when a fly ball by Powell was misplayed for an error. Powell ended up at second on the play and after a walk to Williams, Lang doubled in two more runs to make the score 9-0. Lang would score the final run on Howell’s second sacrifice fly of the game.
While Florida Southern had nine hits in the game, Lynn (14-23, 0-13) had six but was unable to get any of them home. Rachael Larkins had two of them, but the Knights wasted her leadoff singles in both the second and fourth innings. Her hit in the second inning was followed by a double by Andrea Lewis, but they were stranded in scoring position as FSC pitcher Brittany Minton got two strikeouts to end the inning.
In the fourth, both Larkins and Mika Tatar singled to start the inning before Lewis went down swinging. Lucy Wilkinson then hit a looping fly ball into short right center that dropped in, but Tatar was forced to hold on the play and Powell easily threw her out from right field for a force at second. When Jordan Angel grounded out to third, the Knights had left two more runners on base.
That was the last inning for Minton, who earned the win to improve to 13-6. She struck out three and walked none. Heidi Schumacher finished up the shutout with a scoreless fifth inning.
In game two, Christine Clark took the circle for the Moccasins but fell into a 2-0 hole as the Knights scored twice in the top of the first inning. The Mocs committed an error to help them out, but Larkins drove in one of those runs with her third hit of the afternoon.
The Moccasins came right back with three in the bottom of the first as they started with four consecutive hits. Sara Lovestrand, who went three-for-four in the game, had the first of those hits and put herself into scoring position with a stolen base. Alex singled her in, and Powell followed with another single. Both of them scored when Williams tripled to left center, giving the Mocs a 3-2 lead.
The Mocs got hits from Lovestrand in the second, Powell in the third and Dani Blake in the fourth but were unable to score again until the bottom of the fifth when Powell picked up her third hit of the game and her fourth of the doubleheader. She eventually crossed the plate on Howell’s two-out single up the middle.
Though Lynn wasn’t able to score at all after the first inning, there were still some tense moments. The Knights left two runners on in the fourth and two more in the fifth. The fifth inning was especially tough on the Knights, who got a bloop double from Angel and a base hit from Meghan Osborne that gave them runners at second and third with none out. They tried to squeeze in the tying run, but third baseman Ashley Hunt made a quick pick-up while racing in front of the pitcher’s circle and got the ball to Heather Raulerson in time for the out at the plate.
Hunt followed that by fielding a ground ball off the bat of Amber Havnar and getting a force out at third with Lovestrand covering. Clark finished the inning by striking out Larkins, who had been perfect at the plate up to that point in the doubleheader.
Clark finished the game for her 12th win of the season against three defeats, allowing only one earned run on seven hits. She struck out four and walked one.
Florida Southern will be at home again on Monday and Tuesday when it hosts Florida Tech in another three-game Sunshine State Conference series. Monday’s single game starts at 7:00 p.m., and Tuesday’s doubleheader begins at 6:00.
