The No. 25 Auburn Tigers began their stay at the Puerto Vallarta College Challenge a day earlier than expected by playing its first game of the weekend on Wednesday rather than Thursday due to impending rain.
Wednesday’s opener against Wichita State played out similarly to the Tigers’ season opener with Virginia Tech last Friday, where the game needed extra innings to complete. However, Auburn managed to sneak out with an 8-6 win over the Shockers.
Auburn led Wichita State, 6-1, heading to the bottom of the 7th inning before the Shockers stormed back to force extra innings. With two outs in the inning, Wichita State’s Bailey Urban nailed a grand slam to cut the Auburn lead to 6-5, and a wild pitch two at-bats later allowed another run to score to force extra innings.
[autotag]Rose Roach[/autotag] and [autotag]Nelia Peralta[/autotag] teamed up to play the role of hero in the top of the 8th inning to seal the win. Roach grounded out to allow [autotag]Axe Milanowski[/autotag] to score from 3rd base to push the Tigers ahead by one run. One at-bat later, Peralta singled up the inning to score [autotag]Skylar Elkins[/autotag] to extend the Tigers’ lead to 8-6.
Wichita State failed to answer, as they went down in order in the bottom half of the 8th inning to end the game.
Roach was the Tigers’ top batter in the game by going 1-for-3 at the plate with three RBI. Peralta and Elkins followed suit with two RBI each. Maddie Penta allowed three hits over 6.1 innings of work in the victory, striking out 10 batters.
Auburn returns to the field Thursday to face UC Davis and No. 16 Utah at noon and 2:30 p.m. CT respectively. FloSoftball will handle the broadcast of each game.
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