May 14, 2004
Senior Jessica Kapchinski threw her second complete game of the day as the Aggies fell to Baylor, the 4-seed, 2-1 in an elimination game at the Big 12 Softball Tournament on Friday.
"We come in to this tournament as the best hitting team, scoring the most runs and having the most RBI but we didn't do that here," A&M Head Coach Jo Evans said. "We still got great pitching from Jess (Kapchinski). She threw great and gave us a chance to win but we didn't get our jobs done at the plate."
The Aggies jumped out to a one-run lead in the first when designated player Lindsay Wilhelmson hit a sac fly to left field scoring Sharonda McDonald from third.
The Aggies would go on to strand eight runners while the Bears scored their two runs off of a Stephanie Pomes home run in the top of the second.
With the loss, A&M falls to 32-20 overall and was eliminated from the tournament. The Aggies were 1-2 in the tournament with a win over Kansas on Wednesday and losses to Missouri and Baylor on Friday.
Kapchinski took both lossed and fell to 17-8 overall and 1-2 in the tournament.
Coach Evans looks to take some lessons from the tournament and apply them to an NCAA Regional bid.
"We have to take what we learned from this tournament and move forward. I thought we were a bit rusty at the plate and I think the time off really showed. I think we need to build from right here, right now. The thing I like about our team is that we always have a lot of fight and we never quit. Our goal and our expectation is to go win a regional, wherever it may be."
The eight regional tournaments will begin Thursday, May 20 with bids going out this Sunday between 7 and 8 p.m. (CDT) on ESPN News. The eight host schools are Florida State, Michigan, Georgia, Nebraska, Baylor, Arizona, UCLA and Stanford.