The first swing Kelsea Roth took against Baylor starting pitcher Courtney Repka on Sunday afternoon was short and quick and resulted in a towering drive down that hooked just foul as it cleared the left-field wall.
Her next swing was similar as the freshman first baseman ripped a line drive outside the third-base bag.
“If you’re going to pull the ball, you’re going to have to start your swing sooner because you’re getting jammed all the time,” coach Ehren Earleywine said he told Roth before the game.
Call it a lesson learned.
With Missouri (28-5 overall, 7-2 Big 12 Conference) already leading 1-0 in the bottom of the first, Roth drove the next pitch from Repka again to left, but this time kept it fair, blasting it over the wall for a two-run homer and giving the Tigers an early 3-0 lead.
“I needed to let the ball travel a little more and stay inside of it,” Roth, who is hitting for a .347 batting average, good for second on the team, said.
The Tigers added another run in the first and three more in the second on RBIs by senior outfielder Ashley Fleming and Roth.
It was more than starting pitcher Chelsea Thomas would need.
The junior hurler tossed a complete-game shutout, giving up only two hits, striking out 10 and not allowing a Baylor runner past second base as the Tigers beat the Bears 7-0 to complete a weekend sweep. Thomas is now 14-3 on the season with a 0.58 ERA.
“I wouldn’t say it was my best day,” Thomas said. “After we got the big lead I was trying to just throw strikes and get the easy outs.”
Earleywine also said it wasn’t the sharpest his ace, who has nine career no-hitters, has been this year, but said even when she’s at 80 percent she’s good enough to beat most of the teams they play against.
Although Missouri offense stalled later in the game — the Tigers didn’t get a hit after the third inning — the seven-run total tied the most Missouri had scored in its last nine games.
Roth credited the outburst to Missouri enjoying a more balanced approach at the plate, with many players up and down the lineup chipping in instead of waiting around for the big hit.
“Today it was really nice because everyone contributed,” she said. “We all hit it around pretty well.”
Earleywine said his team took an advanced approach at the plate Sunday, one it hadn’t taken in weeks past when it hadn’t lived up to its potential offensively.
“They cut the plate in half and said, ‘If you throw it on this side of the plate I’m going to hit it hard, and if you throw it on this side of the plate we’re going to take it,’” he said. “The difference is seven runs. If we play like that we can make a run at a Big 12 or a national championship.”
Still, the coach said he would have liked to see his team keep scoring as the game progressed.
“We didn’t keep our foot on the gas like I thought we should have,” Earleywine said. “But when you jump out with four runs and Chelsea Thomas is pitching, you’re going to beat everyone in the country pretty much.”
