money South Dakota State wins Summit League softball title, will take on Michigan in NCAA tournament
VERMILLION – It didn’t play out anywhere near how they envisioned it, but the South Dakota State softball team is going back to the NCAA tournament for the second straight year.
That's after the Jacks clinched the Summit League tournament championship on Sunday with a 5-0 win over the University of Nebraska Omaha. They'll play Michigan in the Orlando Regional on Friday, hosted by Central Florida.
The conference tournament was supposed to be on the Jackrabbits’ home field, a reward for winning last year’s conference title. Weather forced it to move south to the Coyotes’ home field, robbing the Jacks of the chance to play, and then celebrate, at home. And it took the Jacks two games to clinch the championship on Sunday, as the Mavericks forced a winner-take-all in the double-elimination tournament by beating SDSU 3-0 Sunday morning.
By the time Tori Kniesche notched her 16th strikeout to end the second game, though, none of that mattered. SDSU players chanted "back-to-back" after mobbing Kniesche in the circle, having earned another chance to make a run in the national tourney.
“It’s still awesome, it doesn’t matter where it is,” said Krista Wood, SDSU’s back-to-back Summit League coach of the year. “We’re having fun. We’ll still go back to Brookings and take pictures; it’s just as fun and it means the same.”
It was cold when the first game started at 10 a.m., and the SDSU bats didn’t warm up until the weather did. That was in large part due to the work of Omaha ace Kamryn Meyer. The tall right-hander whiffed 10 Jackrabbits in a dominating, three-hit shutout. The Mavs broke a scoreless tie in the fifth with a two-out rally, getting RBI singles from Lynsey Tucker and Jamie White off SDSU 20-game winner Grace Glanzer to take a 3-0 lead that would stand.
But while SDSU had Kniesche ready to start Game 2, Omaha (32-14) had little choice but to try to squeeze another gem out of Meyer. She got the nod in Game 2 despite throwing 110 pitches in the opener, and Meyer lasted three innings, allowing just one run, which was unearned. That run, SDSU’s first of the day, came on a sacrifice fly from Rozelyn Carrillo. The Jacks broke it open with three runs in the fifth, the big blow coming on a two-run homer by Cylie Halvorson. Emma Osmundson would add an RBI single in the seventh. Halvorson’s homer was the 74th of the season for SDSU, breaking the team record set last year.
All that was more than enough for Kniesche (18-5), who continued what’s been an incredible season. It was her second one-hit shutout in as many days, her 10th shutout of the season and her 15th start of the year in which she reached double digits in strikeouts. Kniesche walked the first batter of the seventh, but came back to strike out the next three hitters to end the game with an exclamation point.
“I felt a little pressure, but I wanted to do it for the seniors,” Kniesche said of taking the circle for a winner-take-all matchup. “My plan was to attack the batters and trust my defense, and the offense had my back. It went really good.”
South Dakota State softball will face Michigan in NCAA tournament
After the game, SDSU jumped on the bus and headed back to Brookings for the NCAA tournament selection show. The Jacks (40-11) are headed to Orlando, where they’ll play Michigan on Friday at 2:30 p.m. Central Florida will take on Villanova.
SDSU made its NCAA tournament debut last year, where they beat Stanford 7-1 in their debut before dropping the next two. With most of the same players back this year, the Jacks are confident they’re a threat to advance.
“I do think we’ll come in with even more confidence,” Wood said. “Our goal is to get in a regional and win it. We’re ready to get in there and compete. Just getting there is the tough part, and through everything – having to come down here (to VermillIon), having to play two games a day in the winner’s bracket – our kids were resilient.”
This article originally appeared on Sioux Falls Argus Leader: South Dakota State wins Summit League softball title by downing Omaha.
