BEAUMONT, Texas — Playing come from behind once again, Lamar University’s softball team completed a sweep of Texas A&M-Commerce in their final regular season game at the LU Softball Complex sending out eight seniors the right way. With the series sweep, LU finished with 20 wins, the most since 2019, and claimed the fourth seed overall for the upcoming Southland Conference tournament.
In her final start at the complex, Aaliyah Ruiz won her third game of the series when she pitched a complete-game victory allowing one run on seven hits while striking out six batters to sit at 344 career strikeouts. Rien Milliken would be LU’s top hitter picking up two of LU’s three hits and driving in both runs of the game.
Ruiz got into an early jam in the first inning as she gave up a leadoff walk and a bunt single. But she settled down and managed to hold AMC without a run. Ruiz couldn’t find her rhythm despite a scoreless second inning and in the third inning, the Lions broke through with a run on a bases loaded sacrifice fly. While AMC threatened again in the fourth inning, LU kept the deficit at one run after Aleka Xayaseng secured the third out.
Meanwhile, LU’s offense couldn’t get going early as their best chance to score was in the third after Felixia Hinojosa was hit by a pitch and Olivia Taylor advanced her to second with a sacrifice bunt. But the next two Cardinal hitters couldn’t get in the run. In the bottom of the fourth, the Cardinals knotted things up as Milliken drove in the tying run with a single to center. In the fifth inning, Ruiz was helped out by two defensive plays from Mikaila Kenney and Hinojosa while Nicolette Ramirez added made two plays of her own in the sixth inning to keep the score tied at one.
In the bottom of the sixth, Sam Bean recorded a one-out double and reached third on a wild pitch. After a walk to Kaylee Ancelot, who later stole second, Milliken came up and sent a fly ball to left that was enough to score Bean for a 2-1 lead. Despite the first Lion runner reaching on an error in the seventh, Ruiz had no trouble sealing the 20th win for LU retiring the next three hitters.
As the fourth seed of the upcoming SLC tournament, LU will be taking on fifth seed Texas A&M-Corpus Christi to open the tournament at noon on Tuesday. A win for them would put them up against top seed McNeese at 11:00 am on Wednesday. A loss would schedule them to play at 6:30 pm on Wednesday.