A season-high 14 hits from the Tiger bats and a career-high 12 strikeouts from Marissa McCann propelled Missouri to a 10-2 win over Drake on Saturday afternoon.
The fury began in the bottom of the first when leadoff hitter Addy Waits doubled to right center on a 3-1 count. After a sacrifice bunt to move Waits to third, Abby Hay drilled another extra-base hit to send her home.
An RBI-double off the bat of Stefania Abruscato and an ensuing rocket over the left field wall from Abby Carr quickly propelled the Tigers to a 4-0 lead.
“(She) doesn’t make the moment any bigger. I mean, that’s why she’s been very consistent with her play,” Head Coach Larrisa Anderson said about Carr who also pitched 4.2 innings this weekend.
The Tigers’ four runs and five hits on 28 pitches forced an early pitching change, with junior Peyton Driscoll relieving redshirt senior starter Jayme Scheck.
Before Saturday’s game, Driscoll had appeared in only 19.1 innings this season with a 9.50 ERA. While she recorded the final out of a long first inning, she saw the hot bats come alive again in the second.
After two outs to start the inning, a two-RBI-single from Hay and back-to-back extra-base knocks from Abruscato and Carr produced another four-run show.
“That shows me that they have fight, and they didn’t back down once they got two outs…sometimes when you have two outs, they just pack it in and they move on to the next inning…when you score early, it takes the pressure off of our pitchers,” Anderson said.
That pressure was nowhere to be found for Marissa McCann, who fanned a career-high 12 batters at the plate.
While the Bulldogs struggled early in the circle, the Tigers needed no one to take the reins from McCann.
McCann pitched her second complete-game of the weekend, having lost Friday to Miami (OH) in a performance where she gave up five runs on eight hits and four walks.
Before this weekend’s invitational, McCann held a 1-3 season record with a 4.08 ERA, a point higher than her average through 10 games last year. That, paired with Friday’s breakdown, raised some questions about her productivity.
Despite a rocky start to the season, McCann demonstrated why she is the Tigers’ number one option in the circle.
“Today, we approached it a little bit differently…I thought she had really good command, really good control and focus, and that was the Marissa McCann that I’ve seen before,” Anderson said.
“Coach really just had me emphasize and focus on one pitch at a time,” McCann said about the transition between games.
After forcing flyouts from her first two batters, McCann struck out the next eight.
After 3.1 perfect innings from McCann, a bobbled ball from second baseman Sophie Smith allowed Drake’s Frankie Rita to reach first. Two at-bats later, sophomore Caddisy Gall belted a ball deep past the left field fence to score Drake’s only runs.
Aside from those two costly hits and a walk in the fifth, McCann stayed solid, striking out three of the remaining five batters she faced.
She wouldn’t need to step inside the circle for a sixth or seventh inning, as the Tiger bats sealed it early.
An RBI-single in the fourth from Sidney Forrester made it 9-2 Tigers, one run away from a run-rule victory.
The next inning, with Waits on first and pinch-hitter Saniah Hill on second, Smith hit a soft single to right field. As Hill touched home, the Missouri dugout flooded the field in celebration.
“I feel good about it. I really hope that we can, as a team, take the momentum of everything we’ve been doing,” said McCann about her outing.
The Tigers leave Columbia with a .500 record from the Mizzou Invitational and will head down to Gainesville, FL to take on the Florida Gators on Saturday.