Box Score |  Season Stats | MVC-Only Stats
 
SPRINGFIELD – Visiting Drake scored five runs in the seventh inning and overcame a 5-4 deficit in the final inning to hand Missouri State (28-19, 12-10 MVC) a 9-5 setback here Sunday in the rubber game of a three-game Missouri Valley Conference series.
 
Drake's Nicole Newman (23-6) struck out 11 Bears and walked one. However, the Bears scattered six hits off the All-American right-hander on Sunday and kept her on the ropes throughout the hotly-contested affair with timely hits and three Bulldog errors.
 
"I am proud of the way we competed today against a great pitcher and a great program," said MSU head coach Holly Hesse. "It's been a long time since Newman was tested that deep into a game and a long time since Drake has had to come back in the final inning. It's a tough loss for us, but we took the fight to them all day."
 
Drake's winning rally was engineered, in part, with Newman's game-tying single to right with nobody out in the final frame. The Bulldogs then sacrificed runners to second and third before Gabby Jonas grounded into a fielder's choice play in which MSU's Payton Minnis gunned down Taryn Pena at the plate for the second out. However, on the next play, Abby Buie's ground ball after a nine-pitch at-bat drew a throw to the plate that Newman got under for the go-ahead run. The Bears threw down to second in an effort to get an advancing Buie, but Jonas came around to score in the mayhem to put Drake up by two.
 
To add insult to injury, Libby Ryan then lifted a deep fly ball to left for her second home run of the series, a two-run blast to make it 9-5.
 
Drake (36-14, 21-2 MVC) had 10 hits on the day and scored five runs off its two extra-base hits alone – Ryan's homer in the seventh and a base-clearing double by Mandi Roemmich in the fourth that tied the game, 3-3, at the time.
 
Missouri State led most of the contest, breaking on top in the second inning with a two-out triple to right by Rachel Weber. Steffany Dickerson started the rally with a one-out walk before Weber came up two batters later and lifted a deep fly ball into the cross winds in right field that dropped in for extra bases. Pinch runner Abi LaValley came around to score from first to make it a 1-0 game.
 
The Bears tacked on two more in the third, thanks in part to a pair of Drake errors. After an infield hit by Darby Joerling, a sacrifice by Kyana Mason and a line drive single by Minnis, Daphne Plummer loaded the bases when her liner to short was dropped. Newman came back to fan Hunsaker, but the Bears took advantage of a Dickerson pop up that was misplayed by the Bulldogs when Kennedy Frank and Ryan collided in shallow right field to plate two more runs and make it 3-0.
 
DU captured its first lead in the fifth on an unearned run of its own after Newman singled home Frank who reached on a throwing error to start the inning.
 
Drake's first lead was short lived, however, with the Bears counter punching in the home half of the fifth on a bases-loaded groundout from Hunsaker to tie it and a sacrifice fly by Dickerson to put the Bears up 5-4. MSU's one-run lead heled until the seventh, when Drake mounted its unlikely comeback.
 
Dickerson (18-10) struck out six Bulldogs in 6.2 innings of work and walked just three. Erin Griesbauer faced one batter in relief to record the final out in the Drake seventh.
 
Mason and Minnis led MSU's offensive output with two hits apiece. Mason finished with three hits in the series.
 
Missouri State heads into the final week of the regular season with a three-game set at Indiana State on tap for Friday and Saturday in Terre Haute, Ind., before the MVC Tournament gets underway in Peoria, Ill., May 8-11.