The second day of the TCCAA/NJCAA Region VII tournaments at Chattanooga State began with a big surprise for the host softball team and ended with a mild pleasant surprise for the host baseball team.
The top-seeded and nationally 12th-ranked Lady Tigers lost 4-3 to ninth-seeded Roane State, which went on to lose 8-0 to fifth-seeded Cleveland State and faces Chattanooga State (49-11) again today at 12:30 with elimination at stake. The Lady Tigers bounced back with a 4-0 defeat of Columbia State, and even later – pushing midnight – the seventh-seeded baseball Tigers outlasted No. 2 seed Motlow State, 10-8.
“They made some really good plays, and we didn’t make some plays we usually make,” Lady Tigers coach Blythe Golden said about Roane’s Lady Raiders (19-31).
“We just battled back,” Golden, the TCCAA coach of the year, said after the night-game win. “We had good pitching. Our offense is still a little slow, but we had good at-bats, just not much falling. We’ll keep swinging.”
The win over Columbia State (33-20-1), which earlier lost 3-1 to No. 2 seed Walters State, must be followed by five more in a row for Chattanooga State to return to the national tournament. But the Lady Tigers did have a 35-game winning streak in the regular season.