While Blair Hall was ablaze, the Eastern bats were not quite as hot due to Tennessee Martin’s pitcher Nicole Davis.

The Skyhawk pitcher limited the Panthers to two runs, while her offense squeaked out a victory by tallying three runs.

The 3-2 game was capped when freshman Sandyn Short, who leads the Panthers in just about every offensive category, struck out on a Davis fastball. Runners, at the time, were on first and second.

But the offensive threat in the bottom of the seventh inning could have done more damage against the Skyhawks if a play had gone their way to start the inning.

To lead off that inning, center fielder Jessica Irps laid down a near-perfect bunt and looked like she had beat the throw to first base. But the umpire disagreed and called Irps out on what became a bang-bang play at the bag.

“There were a couple of plays that just didn’t end up going our way like that,” Eastern manager Lloydene Searle said. “That’s a tough way to lose a game, because we put pressure on them, but we just couldn’t convert when the situation called for it.”

Not only was it the bottom of the seventh in which the Panthers failed to drive in runners in scoring position, but just about the same situation occurred in the bottom of the fifth inning.

In that case, freshman outfielder Katy Steele doubled with two outs to the left-center field gap. Then, with first base open, the Skyhawks decided to walk Short and pitch to first basemen Mandy Lindwall. The usually dependable first basemen, couldn’t come through for Eastern though as she struck out with the tying run on second base.

“Today, for the most part, I was proud of how we were able to get runners in scoring position,” Searle said. “But it was frustrating because we couldn’t get the key hits in those situations.”

These offensive situations in which Eastern could not come through, failed to help out freshmen pitcher Heather Hoeschen. Both Hoeschen and Davis completed the game, but it was Davis who ended the game credited with the victory.

But by no means does that mean that Hoeschen was outpitched. In fact two of the three runs that Hoeschen did give up were unearned, as opposed to Davis whose two runs were both earned.

“You have to give a lot of credit to their pitcher (Davis),” Searle said. “She was overpowering on the mound, but we did a good job getting runners on base. We just couldn’t drive them in.”

Hoeschen, however, stuck to the game plan that her coach gave her before the game, and followed nearly to exactly what her coach wanted.

The plan just consisted of getting and staying ahead of the Seahawk hitters in every count.

But the couple of batters that Hoeschen did fall behind were the one’s who did the damage.

Freshmen second basemen, and number nine hitter in the lineup, Fallon Lowery came up with the big hit for UTM. Her hit brought in two runs, and made the score 3-1 which was enough to hold up for the rest of the game.