Kate Drohan would rather her team didn’t wait until the end of the game to score runs, but if the Wildcats win, it doesn’t really matter to the coach.
Northwestern (8-6) scored 16 of their 27 runs at the Mary Nutter Collegiate Classic in the sixth inning or later to win all five of their games at the event. NU came back three times in the seventh inning to propel it to its first clean sweep of a pre-conference tournament since 2011.
“We’re understanding what it takes to win and that’s something we’re going to continue to work on each and every game,” Drohan said. “I would like to see us make adjustments a little bit quicker in the game and not have to wait until the seventh, but I’d rather have fight and guts than anything else.”
NU started the weekend in thrilling fashion with a tense game with Georgia Tech (8-4). The teams were scoreless headed into the seventh inning, when the Yellow Jackets struck for two runs off senior Meghan Lamberth in the top of the inning. But the Cats came right back, and junior Marisa Bast knocked in two runs with a single in the bottom of the seventh to give NU the walk-off win.
Just hours later, Bast hit a two-run home run to put NU in front of No. 4 Tennessee (12-1), but the Volunteers worked to get two runs of their own. In the bottom of the sixth, sophomore infielder Anna Edwards doubled into right centerfield, and freshman pinch runner Fran Strub later scored on a fielding error to give the Cats a 3-2 lead.
Sophomore Amy Letourneau worked a nearly flawless seventh to pick up the complete game win.
In each of NU’s five wins it scored in the sixth inning or later, and each time a different player stepped up on offense. In a 4-1 win over Brigham Young (5-9), junior Mari Majam brought home the winning run in the top of the seventh. Lamberth helped her own cause with a double against Loyola Marymount (3-6) to give NU a 3-2 lead in top of the seventh inning.
The Cats would lose the lead in the bottom of the inning, but Lamberth got another clutch hit to give NU the lead for good. In the finale against Long Island University-Brooklyn (2-11), sophomore Andrea DiPrima knocked in a run with a single to tie the game at 9 in the seventh before Lamberth brought in the winning run later in the frame.
“We showed a lot of fight, and that’s about being gutsy,” Drohan said. “We stayed in it and we kept our focus on the little things that we needed to do to make something happen. Every single time we had a different person stepping up and making it happen, whether we needed a base runner or advancing a runner, everyone stepped up.”
