After a scoreless game through the first four innings, the Tigers scored a combined three runs in the fifth and sixth inning to pull out a 3-1 win over the Rebels on Sunday.
With the win, head coach Mickey Dean earned the 600th win of his head coaching career.
Shelby Lowe got the start in the circle and kept the Rebels' bats in check for most of the day. In seven innings of work, she tallied five strikeouts and only gave up one run.
Ole Miss starter Ava Tillmann had equal success, keeping the Tigers scoreless through four innings.
With two runners on and nobody out, Makenna Dowell singled to center to score Auburn's first run in the fifth. Maddison Koepke was next up, and she was able to hit the ball in play to score Lindsey Garcia. While Koepke got on base from an error, she was unable to score that inning.
The Rebels answered in the bottom half of the inning with an RBI single of their own. Auburn fought back in the sixth as Alyssa Rivera doubled to left field and scored just two batters later.
"What I did was took our most aggressive hitters in the count, and I put them one through four in the lineup," Dean said. "The rest of the team just fed off it. Maddison Koepke had a big hit. Tyler King got us going early. Lindsey Garcia came through in a clutch situation. I think we did a great job of continuing to keep pressure."
Shelby Lowe struggled in the final innings, walking one batter and hitting another. Still, her defense made some great plays, including Rivera gunning down an Ole Miss runner from right field trying to stretch a single into a double. Lowe is now 13-5 in her freshman season.
After the game, Auburn's players doused Dean with silly string to commemorate his 600th career victory. Apparently, he was unaware of his milestone until after they covered him with the silly string.
"I didn't even know what was happening," Dean said. "I didn't know what the team was doing postgame with the silly string. I was thinking it was alright to celebrate, but we have won before. Then they informed me. It was a pretty cool moment."
The Tigers have their final home series next weekend, as Tennessee travels to Auburn for a weekend series. The first game is set for Friday at 5 p.m. CST.
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Dylan Fox, Junior in Civil Site Design Engineering, joined The Plainsman as a sports writer in Spring 2020. From Geneva, IL.
