Game One Box Score
Game Two Box Score

WILKES-BARRE, Pa. – With its two wins over Wilkes on Thursday afternoon, the Susquehanna women's softball team picked up its fourth win a row and ninth in its last 10 games.

SU (21-5) won game 11-1 before winning the nightcap 4-3.

Kathryn Gilbert (Mechanicsburg, Pa./Cumberland Valley) went 3-for-3 in game one with one run scored while Anna Heggenstaller (Liverpool, N.Y./Greenwood) was 2-for-3 – with both hits homeruns – and four RBI.

Starter Morgan Lewis (Newtown, Pa./Council Rock North) pitched the first four innings and gave up only one run while picking up seven strikeouts. Ashley Cole (Carle Place, N.Y./Carle Place) pitched a scoreless fifth inning.

Kathryn Gilbert opened the game with a single up the middle and later came around to score the game's first run on a Lauren Gilbert (Mechanicsburg, Pa./Cumberland Valley) sac fly. A wild pitch allowed the second run to score and SU led 2-0 after one half inning of play.

The Colonels cut that lead in half in the bottom of their inning before the Crusaders plated two more runs in the second, the first of which scored on a Heggenstaller homer to center field. Lauren Gilbert knocked in the inning's second run that scored Larissa Luu (Montandon, Pa. / Milton) who had followed Heggenstaller's homer with a single.

A fourth-inning bases-loaded walk by Lauren Gilbert made it a 5-1 Susquehanna lead. That was the first-run of a breakout, seven-run inning for SU. Heggenstaller contributed to three of those runs with her second homer of the afternoon – a three-run shot – that made it an 11-1 ballgame.

Game two was a bit less of an offensive explosion, although at the start it seemed to be headed in that direction.

Susquehanna opened the game with three runs in the first inning that got started to three-consecutive hits, two of which were doubles. Brianna Murphy (Hazlet, N.J./Mater Dei Prep), Brittney Devlin (Furlong, Pa./Central Bucks East) and Taylor Brady (Phillipsburg, N.J./Bethlehem Catholic) all drove in runs in the inning to give starter Sarah Hoffman (Laceyville, Pa./Wyalusing Valley) a 3-0 lead before she threw her first pitch.

The Colonels were able to get back one of those runs in their half of the first inning. It remained a 3-1 Susquehanna lead, however, until the bottom of the fourth when Wilkes scored two runs – both unearned – to knot the game at three.

It did not stay tied for long, though, as Luu led off the top of the fifth with a solo homer to left field for a 4-3 Crusader advantage, which would ultimately stand as the game-winning hit.

Cole came in to pitch in the bottom of the fifth inning and kept the Colonels off the scoreboard – including a one-two-three seventh inning – for the final three innings to pick up a save in the 4-3 Susquehanna victory.

Hoffman finished with just one run allowed in four innings and Cole racked up five strikeouts in her three shutout innings.

SU hosts Juniata on Saturday, April 13 with the doubleheader starting at 1 p.m. The team's senior members will be honored in a ceremony between games.