Merced College softball pushes past sixth-inning lull to beat Porterville

Talented as the Merced College softball team is, it’s easy to forget sometimes it’s made up mostly of freshmen.

That is, unless you coach them. As skillfully as the She-Devils can play, the team is prone to the occasional letdown inning, when games start to lull. Merced experienced one such inning Tuesday afternoon, when a three-run sixth allowed Porterville College back into the game.

She-Devils coach Suzanne McGhee gathered her team between innings and gently reminded it the game wasn’t over. The team responded with three runs in the bottom of the sixth to put the exclamation point on an 8-3 victory at She-Devil Diamond.

“I reminded them that we have to play to our capabilities and not to the pace of the game,” said McGhee, whose team won its fifth straight. “I think there’s still a lot of inexperience there where we didn’t expect them to come up and still swing at the ball late in the game.

“The good news is they did respond and pick it back up. The last couple weeks with this team, anytime I point out that their energy is falling off, they’ve been able to pick it back up.”

Merced (9-7, 4-2 Central Valley Conference) never trailed and built a 5-0 lead through five innings.

First baseman Brianna Lopez (2 for 4, three RBIs) stayed hot. The freshman opened the scoring and extended her hitting streak to nine games with an RBI double in the first.

Arisa Nishibe singled in a second run in the third inning and then stole home to make it 3-0.

Two Porterville (6-10, 1-5 CVC) errors plated Marta Mitchell (2 for 3, two runs) in the fifth, and Jennifer Moreno bunted home Lopez on the next play to give the She-Devils a 5-0 lead.

It looked like more than enough run support for starting pitcher Jessica Arias. The sophomore allowed a single to open the game, then sat down 15 of the next 16 batters.

The Pirates finally broke through in the sixth when Isabel Romero delivered a two-out, run-scoring single. The Porterville rally should have ended there, but back-to-back fielding errors allowed two more runs to score and trimmed Merced’s lead to 5-3.

But the She-Devils wasted no time answering after McGhee’s pep talk. Mitchell singled in Shelbee Ward, and Lopez followed with a two-run double off the bottom of the fence in left-center.

“Coach got into us pretty good,” Lopez said. “She kind of told us not to step down to the competition. We’re all basically freshmen and still pretty young, so we kind of have to be reminded almost every game.

“The important thing was, we finished it. That’s the way it’s gone the last couple weeks. Our confidence went from down here to up here, and we believe we can beat anybody.”

This story was originally published March 15, 2016 at 6:50 PM with the headline "Merced College softball pushes past sixth-inning lull to beat Porterville."