After smashing the ball to right field, Kasey Cooper kept her eyes on Georgia outfielder Sydni Emanuel. As Emanuel leapt for the ball while backed up against the wall, Cooper knew she was either going to be the hero of the night or the victim of a potential SportsCenter Top 10 play. Fortunately for her and No. 2 Auburn, it was the former.
The Tigers (43-5, 13-3 SEC) defeated No. 12 Georgia, 4-3, on Cooper's three-run walkoff shot that left the Jane B. Moore crowd jubilant. To make things even sweeter for Cooper, her home run allowed her to break the school record for career RBI with 210, passing Branndi Melero's mark of 208.
"I wanted to pass the baton," Cooper said. "(Tiffany Howard) found a way on, Emily (Carosone) had a great hit up the middle, and the job was to be a snowflake. Be a snowflake means that you want to be the snowflake before the avalanche comes, and we just kept it going. None of us wanted to be the last out and we found a way."
Down 3-1 in the final frame with two outs, Howard hit a ball toward Georgia's Lacey Sumerlin, who attempted to make the game-ending throw to first base. However, the ball slipped out of her hand and fell to the dirt, giving the Tigers new life. Carosone followed that with a single of her own, Cooper stepped up to the plate, and the rest is history.
Strangely enough, before her triumphant blast past the right field wall, Cooper struggled mightily.
"This is probably the worst game I've ever had," Cooper said with a grin. "(Assistant coach) Corey (Myers) always says that your last at-bat is the most important and he told me, 'Nobody's going to say you made an error. No one's going to say that you had a baserunning mistake. Everyone's going to talk about your last hit.' It really makes me feel good.
"It was my worst game and my best game."
Georgia scored the first three runs of the game, getting an unearned run on a double play to go up 1-0 in the first inning and extending the lead to 3-0 on a two-run homer by Alyssa DiCarlo in the third.
From then on, Kaylee Carlson (13-0) dominated. At one point in the game, she retired 14 consecutive batters. Her complete-game effort proved just as critical for Auburn as Cooper's home run.
"That was just like we planned," Auburn coach Clint Myers joked after the game.
"The biggest thing about it was how they found a way to win," Myers said. "Tiffany gets on, Emily gets the ground ball base hit up the middle, and Coop comes through. If we can turn the lineup over to get those people in there, that's three All-Americans coming to the plate."
Auburn's comeback really began in the bottom of the third, when Howard scored on an RBI groundout by Carosone to cut the deficit to 3-1. The Tigers couldn't get much offensive production between then and the final frame, but they ultimately got just enough production to pull through.
The Tigers will take on the Bulldogs (37-11, 9-7 SEC) in the second game of the series on Saturday at 1 p.m.
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