Criket Blanco and Amanda Beltran hit home runs as the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga softball team rallied late Sunday at UNC Greensboro, but the comeback fell short and the Mocs lost 9-7 as the Spartans completed a sweep of the Southern Conference series. Blanco finished 3-for-4 with four RBIs and two home runs – a solo shot in the first inning and a three-run job in the fifth, when she helped her team trim UNCG’s 8-1 lead to 8-5. The Spartans (32-21, 9-6) added another run in the bottom half of the inning, though, and after Beltran’s two-run homer made it 9-7 in the sixth, the Mocs (27-25, 6-9) went quietly in a 1-2-3 seventh. Beltran finished 3-for-3. UTC hadn’t lost a series with UNCG since 2003, but the Spartans ended that streak when they took both ends of Saturday’s doubleheader.
– No. 13 Tennessee swept Sunday’s Southeastern Conference doubleheader with No. 3 Auburn in dominant fashion, winning both games in five innings via the run rule, 10-2 and 12-1. East Hamilton alum Shaliyah Geathers walked and scored a run in the first game, which was a continuation of Saturday’s contest that was rained out after a half-inning. In the second game, she walked twice, doubled, scored two runs and drove in two runs. The three-game series between the Lady Vols (38-12, 14-6) and the Tigers (45-7, 15-5) concludes tonight.
– Cleveland State closed its regular season over the weekend with three one-run games at Roane State: losses of 5-4 and 7-6 and a 4-3 win behind Kate Headrick’s four-hit, one-earned-run pitching. The last game in the TCCAA series was canceled. Courtni Hammers was 5-for-10 with a homer and six RBIs in the three games for the Lady Cougars (18-29, 10-25), while Kaitlyn Heath was 6-for-9. Mallory Souther was 3-for-4 with two doubles and two RBIs in the second game, when Tori Townson was 2-for-3 with an RBI and Carly Frost scored twice.
Basketball
– Lee University women’s basketball coach Marty Rowe recently signed Roane State’s Haley Cornellison and William Blount High School’s Lindsey Roddy for the 2016-17 season. The 5-foot-11 Cornellison was the TCCAA freshman of the year for 2014-15 and a second-team all-conference selection and an all-academic honoree this past season, when she averaged nine points a game. “Haley will provide us with immediate contribution at the 4 and 3 positions,” Rowe said in a Lee release. “She has proven herself at the junior college level and will be able to come in and help our team in many ways. She is tough, highly skilled and really seems to have a high basketball IQ.” Roddy is a 5-8 guard who averaged almost 14 points and two steals a game as William Blount went 23-10, and she was the District 4-AAA player of the year. She was sixth in the Class AAA state pentathlon last spring and picked Lee over Union University, Carson-Newman, Shorter and Queens University in Charlotte, N.C. “Lindsey is an explosive athlete who happens to be a very good basketball player and is just now beginning to tap into her potential,” Rowe said. “She can get to the rim, has good range, defends with passion and just seems to complete every play.”