April 13, 2002
Game One Box Score
Game Two Box Score
COLUMBIA, S.C. – The South Carolina battery of Megan Matthews, Stacey Johnson and Danielle Quinones combined to shutout and shutdown the Kentucky offense on Saturday, April 13 as the Gamecocks posted 4-0 and 5-0 Southeastern conference softball victories over the visiting Wildcats at USC’s Beckham Field. The doubleheader sweep upped Carolina’s record to 33-12, 14-6 SEC while UK drops to 19-22, 3-11 SEC.
Carolina’s Matthews (17-5) scattered four hits over 7.0 innings of work for the game one victory while her teammate Johnson matched her, allowing just two hits in the complete game effort. Junior Morgan Marr (4-8) took the game one loss for UK, allowing four runs on eight hits while freshman Meghan Cooper (9-8) suffered the loss in game two allowing five runs on 11 hits.
Quinones paced the Gamecocks offense with a 4-for-6, four-RBI afternoon. Megan Cornett also finished 4-for-6 with a home run and two RBI for the Gamecocks. Senior Beth Fogle and junior Nikki Jones each had two hits for the Wildcats.
South Carolina jumped on top early via a two-out RBI single by Debralee Troesh to left field that scored Amber Curtis, who had doubled to left a batter earlier, with the day’s first run in the bottom of the first inning of game one.
The Gamecocks pushed across an unearned run in the bottom of the second as Melissa Sandel reached base on a throwing error by UK third baseman Rachel Friberg and ultimately made it home on an RBI single by Quinones to up the lead to 2-0 Carolina.
The Wildcats could not get their offense going, however, as they put just four runners on over the game’s final five innings with none of them advancing past first base.
The second game was more of the same as USC’s pitching and defense shut down the Wildcats while inflicting just enough offense of their own for the victory.
Neither team could find their way around the bases until Quinones one-out RBI triple plated the game’s first run in the bottom of the third.
Once again the Wildcats could not get anything going on their end as Johnson faced the minimal amount of batters over the final four innings.
USC scored two more in the bottom of the fifth on timely hitting and two more in the sixth off of Cornett’s home run to put the game away.
The two teams will close out the series on Sunday, April 14 with a single game scheduled to start at 1 p.m. EDT.
Game OneKentucky0000000-0 4 2S. Carolina110002X-4 8 1WP: Matthews (17-5). LP: Marr (4-8). S: none.
Game TwoKentucky0000000-0 2 1S. Carolina001022X-5 11 1WP: Johnson (10-5). LP: Cooper (9-8). S: none.
-UK-
