Tennessee entered the seventh inning of Thursday afternoon’s Southeastern Conference softball tournament quarterfinal needing some late heroics.
What the Lady Volunteers didn’t need was an Arkansas grand slam.
Raigan Kramer’s home run to right-center field off Tennessee ace Karlyn Pickens cleared the bases and propelled the No. 7 Razorbacks to a 6-1 win over the No. 5 Lady Vols at Jack Turner Stadium in Athens, Georgia. All six Arkansas runs were unearned, marking the fifth time this season the Lady Vols have lost when Pickens didn’t allow an earned run.
Tennessee, which dropped to 40-14 overall, will learn its NCAA tournament path at 7 p.m. Sunday, when the field is announced on ESPN2.
By eliminating the fourth-seeded Lady Vols, fifth-seeded Arkansas earned a Friday afternoon semifinal date against top-seeded Oklahoma. The Razorbacks (40-11) are 3-1 against Tennessee this year, taking two of three games in Knoxville on March 22-24.
The Razorbacks broke a scoreless tie in the fourth inning when Lady Vols catcher Sophia Nugent ran up the third-base line in a rundown but threw the ball into left field, which enabled Kramer and Bri Ellis to go home. Tennessee pieced together three singles in the sixth inning, with Taylor Pannell accounting for an RBI, but the opportunity for more was snuffed when Nugent’s drive to center field was snagged at the wall by Reagan Johnson.
Pannell committed an error at third base to open the seventh, with that gaffe followed by a fielder’s choice and a strikeout that should have ended the inning. The loss dropped Pickens to 20-8 this season, yet she lowered her earned run average to 0.92.
Laura Mealer went 3-for-3 at the plate, accounting for half of Tennessee’s six hits.
Contact David Paschall at dpaschall@timesfreepress.com.