ASHLAND – Junior slugger
Riley Donovan walked Southern Oregon off twice against Warner Pacific on Friday afternoon at University Field. The circumstances and sounds were vastly different.
In the bottom of the seventh of Game 1, Donovan muscled a two-out single off the hands and into center field to bring home
Hannah Shimek and complete SOU's 3-2 comeback win for a sweep of the three-game Cascade Conference portion of the series. In the bottom of the fifth of Game 2, she popped a noisy two-run home run to left field that triggered the mercy rule at 11-3.
Owners of a 17-game winning streak, the No. 1-ranked Raiders are 23-1 overall, 9-0 in the CCC and off to the best start in team history.
Donovan went 5-for-7 on the day
Allie Stines went 5-for-8. Stines finished the series with six extra-base hits – three doubles, two triples and a home run – and kept alive her 22-game hitting streak while bringing her batting average to .500.
SOU shortstop
Rylan Austin had seven RBIs in the series, including a sacrifice fly in the sixth inning of Game 1 that cut a 2-0 WPU lead in half. The Raiders loaded the bases with no outs in the seventh as
Olivia Mackey lined a single,
Avery Morehead-Hutsell put down one of her four bunt-hits on the day, and Stines followed with her own bunt single.
With one out,
Lauren Quirke's RBI groundout tied it, setting the stage for Donovan's two-out heroics.
Raider ace
Gabby Sandoval outdueled WPU freshman Melia Croydon to improve to 12-0, striking out nine in a three-hit complete game. Croydon blanked the Raiders through five innings and had a lead courtesy of Devinne Amesquita's two-run double in the fourth.
Quirke, who had two hits in each game to up her average to .494, pitched all five innings of the non-conference finale in relief after the first four Knights got on base to take a 2-0 lead against
Hannah Stark.
A day after throwing a two-hit shutout, Quirke held WPU to one hit, struck out seven and didn't walk any. The only run she gave up was unearned, bringing her streak of innings without an earned run to 36 – one short of the SOU record established by Victoria Mackey.
The first four in the Raider lineup – Stines, Shimek, Quirke and Donvan – combined for 10 hits in Game 2, where Shimek hit her third triple of the series. Austin, Mackey and Morehead-Hutsell also had two hits each.
Donovan's homer was her team-leading fourth of the season.
The Raiders will play a critical four-game set next weekend at seventh-ranked Oregon Tech, which is unbeaten going into its series this weekend against Corban.
