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ATLANTA – The University of Iowa softball team fell, 3-2, to Georgia Tech on Saturday night in game three of the ACC/Big Ten Challenge.
“I felt like we had some moments there where we could just bust open,” said UI head coach Marla Looper. “We hit some hard line drives, and one of these days, those are going to fall, but unfortunately tonight they didn’t.”
Brooke Rozier went 1-for-2 with a triple and a walk, while Kaitlyn Mullarkey went 1-for-3 with a double and an RBI. Shayla Starkenburg suffered the loss with a season-high five strikeouts over 6.2 innings.
“Shayla had a nice day in the circle,” said Looper. “She made some adjustments as the game went along. Georgia Tech swings hard, but she was able to work with that and keep them off balance some to allow us to play some defense.”
Georgia Tech (2-7) scored in the bottom of the second inning on a sacrifice fly by Crosby Huckabay, but the Hawkeyes answered with two runs in the top of the third. Pratt walked, stole second, advanced to third on a wild pitch, and scored on a sacrifice fly by Claire Fritsch. Lea Thompson walked and advanced to second on a wild pitch before scoring on a double by Kaitlyn Mullarkey to give Iowa a 2-1 advantage.
The Yellow Jackets drew even off a Jessica Kowalewicz double in the third inning and won off a Karissa Arnold single in the bottom of the seventh. Iowa put runners on base in the sixth and seventh innings as Brooke Rozier tripled to right field and Cheyenne Pratt walked, but the runners were left stranded.
“I wish for our girls that we could have gotten that one, but these are things we learn from,” said Looper, whose team has lost three consecutive one-run games. “We aren’t happy with the outcome, but we can’t hang our heads. We get to face them tomorrow and we know what we are getting in their pitching and their hitting. We have to come out and attack offensively, and those balls are going to fall sometime.”
Iowa (2-6) squares off with Georgia Tech tomorrow at 11:30 a.m. (CT) in its ACC/Big Ten Challenge finale. The game will be live streamed here.