Syracuse softball falls 5-4 to Pitt in extra innings
Syracuse fell to Pitt 5-4 in extra innings Saturday. The Orange led heading into the bottom of the seventh, but were walked off in the eighth. Charlie Hynes | Staff Photographer
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In a bit of deja vu Saturday afternoon, Syracuse entered the bottom of the seventh inning ahead. Three outs remained for Pitt to erase SU’s lead. In part thanks to some chaos on the base paths, the Panthers did, tying the Orange and sending the series finale to extra innings.
The same scenario played out 48 hours prior, resulting in a 9-6, eight-inning series-opening win for Syracuse Thursday evening.
It panned out differently for the Orange Saturday. SU (12-16, 1-9 Atlantic Coast) fell to Pitt (20-17, 6-9 ACC) 5-4 in eight innings.
Rather than sending the entire lineup to the plate and pushing three across it like it did in the top of the eighth Thursday, Syracuse’s first three batters up were sat down in order Saturday. The first two, Lauren Fox and Jadyn Burney, struck out, failing to put the ball in play — something SU hitters did seven times in the top of the eighth Thursday.
Shortly after, Pitt’s Shelby Frazier squared up a rising Julianna Verni offering in the bottom of the eighth, driving it over the center field wall, walking off both the game and the series.
All three games over the weekend were displays of resiliency for both outfits.
Thursday, Pitt came back from down four in the bottom of the seventh to extend the game into an eighth inning. Syracuse avoided a catastrophic collapse with a three-run top of the eighth then made quick work of Pitt after the Panthers finally managed to turn the additional inning over, needing to face just four batters to collect three outs and secure its first conference win of the season.
Friday, the Orange and Panthers swapped leads early. Syracuse gave up a 5-run inning in the bottom of the fourth but responded with three of its own its next turn up, drawing within one run of Pitt. The Panthers held on to win 6-5, evening the series.
Saturday, then, required seventh-inning rallies from both the Orange and Panthers. Syracuse and Pitt each entered their half of the final frame hitting from behind a score. The series ended in circular fashion, in extras, but with a twist: the Panthers’ walk-off.
As much as it was a resilient weekend for the Orange, it was a hopeful one. Especially considering the context of Syracuse’s woeful start to conference play, with seven straight losses and three by run rule.
The Orange bucked recent precedent Saturday and didn’t allow their early deficit, coupled with their frustrating failure to capitalize on early traffic on the base paths and bring home their own base runners, to snowball.
After throwing a whopping 179 pitches two days earlier, Madison Knight was socked early Saturday. SU’s most-turned-to pitcher (a team-high 74.2 innings pitched) gave up a three-run homer to Camryn Murphy in the bottom of the first and was given a quick hook.
So was Sydney Jackson, who entered the game in the second to relieve Knight and promptly threw 14 balls against just five strikes, walking two batters and hitting another to fill the bases and force Syracuse to make a second pitching change just an inning and a third into the game. In came Julianna Verni, fresh off 91 pitches of her own in Friday’s loss.
Frazier’s eighth-inning homer gave Verni another. But that solo shot to center was one of just five hits she allowed across six innings of work. It allowed Syracuse to cut Pitt’s lead to two in the top of the third, one in the top of the fifth, and then complete the comeback and take the lead in the top of the seventh.
Verni worked her way out of the one-out, bases-loaded situation Jackson handed her in the top of the second by striking out Tieley Vaughn and flying out KK Esparza into shallow right. She then went on to retire the first seven batters she faced before Ahmari Braden singled up the middle in the bottom of the fourth.
Behind Verni, Syracuse’s infield of Fox (second), Erika Zamora (third) and Burney (shortstop) cleanly fielded short hops and fired in-stride throws to first, dove laterally to glove grounders en route to escaping the infield dirt, threw to first on-target from their knees and tracked high-climbing fly balls well into the outfield grass to make outs.
And Syracuse’s lineup, as it had all weekend, proved long. Burney, batting leadoff, went 0-for-4 at the plate, never reaching base. Before this weekend, keeping Burney alone off the base paths might’ve been enough to keep the Orange off the scoreboard entirely.
But Saturday, the rest of Syracuse’s lineup picked Burney up. Madelyn Lopez’s first inning line drive single into right gave her a hit in all three of the weekend’s games against Pitt after head coach Shannon Doepking called her “a sleeping giant” following SU’s doubleheader loss to NC State the weekend before.
Knight reached base three times on three walks and scored twice. Kendall Gaunt came into the game in the second, assuming left field for Gabby Lantier and homered to center in the fifth inning. Gaunt then doubled in the top of the seventh, hitting the ball deep into right field, to set up Vanessa Flores’ game-tying RBI single into shallow left and Zamora’s lead-taking sacrifice fly, also into deep right field.
Harmony Jackson’s double smoked off the wall in center would’ve counted had she been legally re-entered into the game after being substituted out for a pinch runner in the third. Further down the order, Fox hit the ball well all day. She reached base three times on two singles and a walk.
The Orange remain last in the ACC. Their six hits and two extra base knocks Saturday won’t be enough to elevate them from the conference’s basement in nearly every offensive statistic. Two of their three pitchers to enter the circle Saturday were still either hit hard or wildly inaccurate.
But Syracuse did something consistently Saturday, and all weekend, that it hadn’t done consistently all season leading up to this series against Pitt.
It hit one through nine, made plays in the field that could’ve been singles and played three close games against the same opponent, battling back from down big, weathering opposing comebacks, and remaining competitive across all seven (or eight) innings of play.
