Softball Bounces Back Against East Carolina
March 11, 2006
East Carolina at Houston Game Two Box Score (PDF)
HOUSTON - Laurie Wagner went 2-for-3 driving home a career-best 3 RBIs and scoring two runs as the University of Houston softball team rebounded for an 8-3 victory in game two of a doubleheader Saturday at the Cougar Softball Stadium. "Laurie has really started to come back around with her swing," head coach Kyla Holas said. "She's started to go through the ball a lot more and getting on her pitches." "It was tough when I was slumping over the last couple of weeks," Wagner said. "I started to come out of it at Baylor and I decided to use conference play as a motivator to really step up my play." Angel Shamblin fired a complete game totaling eight strikeouts allowing four hits and three runs en route to her seventh win of the season. Shamblin also went 3-for-3 at the plate and scored a run. The three hits tie a season-high. Wagner opened the scoring in the second inning cranking a 1-0 pitch into the palm trees in left field giving Houston a 1-0 advantage. "The ball was a little high so I really didn't know if I should have swung at it looking back," Wagner said. "I committed to the pitch swinging as hard as I could and it just happened to leave the park." The Pirates evened the score at 1-1 on a RBI-single in the third inning by Vanessa Moreno.
Houston snatched a 3-1 advantage as Wagner knocked a two-run single past a diving Ashley Quick at third base that scored Angel Shamblin and Jessica Valis. The Cougars pushed the lead to 4-1 in the fourth inning on a RBI-groundout by Brandi Clark. The Missouri City, Texas native is now 5 RBIs shy of reaching 50 for her career. East Carolina charged back slicing the deficit to 4-3 with a two-out two-run single by Krista Jessup in the fifth inning. Houston tacked on a pair of insurance runs in the fifth and sixth innings for the final margin of 8-3. Haley Valis ripped a RBI-double and scored all the way from second on a wild pitch in the fifth inning, while Angel Shamblin crossed the plate on another wild pitch and Katie Bush drove in a run on a ground ball during the following frame. Houston and East Carolina will square off Sunday at 1pm in the rubber game of the weekend series. "I expect us to bring the same defensive intensity we had in the second game," Holas said. "We need to pitch the way we are capable of and the offense needs to continue to produce multiple runs in scoring situations." "After losing that first game, we wanted to bounce back and get two out of three," Wagner said. "We're going to show up with our `A' game and leave it all out on the field." Game Notes
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