WEATHERFORD, Okla. – The Southern Arkansas softball team punched their ticket to the upcoming Great American Conference Tournament in Bentonville, Ark. with eyes on defending their tournament crown from a year ago as SAU beat Southwestern Oklahoma twice on Saturday afternoon.
 
The first of the wins came as the two teams completed their suspended game from Friday afternoon with the Lady Muleriders (26-22, 16-16 GAC) wrapping up a 12-5 decision before Saturday's regularly-scheduled doubleheader got underway. The second of SAU's wins came in the nightcap of the twin-bill as the Lady Muleriders scored 17 runs on 18 hits to claim a 17-5 win.
 
With the two wins, SAU will enter the GAC Tournament as the No. 8-seed and will take on the top-seed in the tournament at 2:00 p.m. on Thursday, April 30. The Lady Muleriders' opponent will be either Henderson State or Southeastern Oklahoma as the two sit one and two in the GAC standings and play each other in a doubleheader on Sunday.
 
For the Lady Muleriders on Saturday, they resumed the opening game of the series in the top of the fourth with Audrey Farfan at the plate with the bases loaded, two outs and SAU leading 7-2. Once play resumed, Farfan drew a walk to score Ashton Atwell and then Summer Ehrig was hit-by-a-pitch to force in another run and make it a nine-run inning before the Lady Bulldogs (8-37, 4-29 GAC) got out of the inning.
 
SAU added a run in the fifth to make it a 10-2 game, but SWOSU rallied for three runs in the fifth to keep the game going. In the top of the seventh, SAU scored on a wild pitch and got a sacrifice fly off the bat of Sarah Higginbotham to plate two insurance runs and bring the game to its eventual final of 12-5.
 
Not long after that game concluded, the two teams began the regularly-scheduled doubleheader and it was SWOSU who jumped out to an 8-0 lead through the first two innings before SAU got on the board for four runs in the top of the third. The major blow in the inning for SAU was a three-run bomb by Higginbotham with the other run scoring on a sacrifice fly off the bat of Chelsea Ivy.
 
SWOSU got two of those runs back in the bottom half of the third, but a two-run single up the middle in the top of the fourth by Ivy made a four-run game once more, 10-6. The two teams swapped single runs in their next two half innings as the score was 11-7 moving into the bottom of the fifth.
 
In the bottom of the fifth, SAU reliever Abby Weaver kept the Lady Bulldogs off the board for the first time in the game and SAU's offense rewarded the freshman right-hander with a four-spot in the sixth to knot the game at 11-all. In that top of the sixth, SAU got a two-run opposite field homerun to right-centerfield from Maddie Dow and a two-RBI single by Ehrig.
 
A RBI single in the bottom of the sixth pushed SWOSU on top 12-11, but a RBI single by Ivy in the top of the seventh forced at least a bottom half of the inning. Another zero was hung in the run column by Weaver to force the game into extras.
 
In the top of the eighth, SAU would get two runners aboard via hit-by-pitch, but were unable to score. In the bottom of the frame, SWOSU picked up a leadoff single and then moved her into scoring position on sacrifice bunt before intentionally passing on Adrienne Martinez to set up a double-play possibility along the infield. A wild pitch, however, in the next at-bat moved both runners into scoring position and a single to left field followed shortly to give the Lady Bulldogs the walk-off win, 13-12.
 
In the final game of the day, the Lady Muleriders jumped out to an early 6-1 lead, scoring three runs in the first, two runs in the second, and one more in the third. SWOSU plated three runs in their half of the third to make it a two-run game, 6-4.
 
Despite the push by SWOSU in the third, the Lady Muleriders would go on to out-score the Lady Bulldogs 11-1 over the final four innings to run away with a 17-5 win.
 
In that game, all nine starters registered a hit with six hitters collecting multiple hits. In fact, the first four batters in the lineup all had at least two hits and the top three hitters (Taylor Guin, Ivy, Atwell) combined for eight RBIs. Courtney Hudgins was a catalyst at the bottom of the order going 4-for-4 with four runs scored and three RBIs. Farfan had the next highest hit total in the game going 3-for-4 with two runs scored and three RBIs.