The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga’s path to the NCAA Division I softball tournament will be a bit more difficult Saturday in Greensboro, North Carolina.
The upside for UTC, though, is that at least there’s still a path.
The Mocs, who won the Southern Conference regular-season championship last week, gave themselves a chance to play for the league tournament title by defeating third-seeded Samford 7-3 in an elimination game Friday evening. However, because they lost a 5-4 battle to tourney host and No. 2 seed UNC Greensboro in the winners-bracket final earlier in the day, the Mocs (40-14) will have to defeat the Spartans (33-24) twice on Saturday to win their 16th Socon tournament title.
Championship competition is set for a 1 p.m. start, with UNCG needing to win only that game to secure the title and the SoCon’s automatic bid for the NCAA tourney, with the entire 64-team field to be revealed Sunday. If UTC wins, a second game would take place afterward.
In UTC’s victory against Samford (24-32), Kendall Forsythe, Jayce Purdy and Acelynn Sellers hit home runs as the Mocs rallied after the Bulldogs went up 3-0 in the top of the first. Forsythe led off the bottom of the second with her seventh shot of the year, while Sellers had a two-run homer with two outs to make it 3-all. Purdy went deep in the bottom of the fourth, adding insurance runs after former Silverdale Baptist Academy standout Kaili Phillips had given UTC the lead by drawing a one-out walk, advancing to second on a passed ball and scoring on a throwing error.