The Daily News-Journal from Murfreesboro, Tennessee • Page C1

Stars fall into osers bracket with 10-5 loss to Wilson Central Wilson Central continued its hot hitting Wednesday at the expense of Siegel and ace pitcher Veronica Westfall. The Lady Wildcats hitters rocked the District 7-AAA Pitcher of the Year en route to a 10-5 win in the Class AAA state softball tournament at McKnight Park. ilson Central advanced to the winners bracket final with the win and will play the Dickson County-Ooltewah winner at 5:30 p.m. today. iegel (34-6) plays Houston at 11:30 a.m.

today in an elimination game. Wilson Central (39-7-1) tagged Westfall for ight runs, including seven earned, in five innings before Cede Loftis relieved her. are having fun right Wilson Central coach Mike Shepard said. long as they are doing that and staying loose, we have a chance. saw Veronica earlier in the season, and we touch her.

The girls just believe right now. Siegel is a great team. Even when we were up, you never thought they were out of it because they can hit all throughout their the most runs Westfall has given up this eason. The Lady Wildcats scored twice in two innings off Loftis. Wilson Central scored three in the first off estfall.

Westfall, who was coming off a 10-inning pitching performance against Hardin Valley, had a rocky first inning. CLASS AAA SOFTBALL: WILSON CENTRAL 10, SIEGEL 5 HELEN Siegel's Eleiyah Wade, left, and Jensen McElroy celebrate scoring two runs in the second inning on Wednesday during their game against Wilson Central at the Class AAA softball tournament. Wilson Central won 10-5. OR GO Tom Kreager HELEN Siegel's Kara Lynne Levi slides into home behind Wilson entral's catcher Shelby Woodard on Wednesday. THE DAILY NEWS JOURNAL TOM KREAGER, 615-278-5168 WILL BORTHICK, 615-278-5167 HATTIESBURG, Starting pitching was expected to set the tone in the Conference USA tournament opener between fourth-seeded MTSU and fifth-seeded Texas-San Antonio at Pete Taylor Park on Wednesday.

Instead, the two evenly-matched teams comb ined for 16 runs and 27 hits in an offensive upris- i ng that ended with UTSA escaping with a 9-7 win ver the Blue Raiders in the double-elimination event. TSU (30-26) will face top-seeded Rice (35-19) today at 9 a.m. in an elimination game. Junior right-hander Nate Hoffmann will get C-USA BASEBALL TOURNAMENT Raiders drop opener Three seasons ago, MTSU baseball coach Jim McGuire was promoted to guide a proud program ed by Steve Peterson for a quarter of a century. Two seasons ago, the Blue Raiders raised the ante in all ports by joining Conference SA.

But none arguably as uch as in baseball, which cur- ently ranks as the seventh-best league in the country in the RPI. This season, MTSU was picked to finish eighth in the preseason, but sat atop the eague standings for all but the ast two weeks and eventually finished three games behind regular-season champion Rice. In as much and deservedly McGuire was named Confere nce USA Coach of the Year aft er his team won 19 league games, second only to nationally ranked Rice and most by the Blue Raiders since 2009 while till in the Sun Belt Conference. very cGuire said in predictable fashion of crediting everyone else first. have so much respect for the coaches in Conference USA from top to bottom.

It all comes down to our players a nd coaches on this team who put all this ith a national RPI at 79th, fifth-best in the league, the Blue Raiders (30-26) need a deep run, if not an outright title, in this Conference USA tournament at Southern Miss to get i nto an NCAA Regional for the first time since 2009. After falling 9-7 Wednesday to fifth-seeded Texas-San Antonio in the opening round, fourth- seeded MTSU faces top-seeded Rice in an elimination game today at 9 a.m. The Owls (35-19) were upset Wednesday and sent to the losers bracket after a 6-5 loss to No. 8 seed Florida International. McGuire figured early this eason that this team probably had what it would take to stay in the hunt for the C-USA egular-season title all season long.

That came in mid-March in the first league series of the COMMENTARY GREG POGUE gmail.com McGuire has proven is worth to MTSU HOOVER, Ala. Vanderbilt sed the SEC rare st weapon the long ball to ally past Missouri 7-6 in 10 inn ings Wednesday. The Commodores hit four ome runs, tied for the most by a team in an SEC Tournament game since 1997, including Rhett walk-off solo hot that sailed over Missouri center fielder Jake glove a few inches. I thought he caught said iseman, who has a team-lead- i ng 13 homers. got all of it, but he angle that good like Dansby low line- drive wanson hit two home runs, tying the SEC Tournament sing le-game record, and Jeren endall added another.

Only ne homer had been hit in the irst five SEC Tournament ames. he game plan as to stay away from fly balls at cavernous Hoover Metropolitan Stadium, which usually contains them, and Swanson sounded almost apologetic for itting homers. Our approach is not to hit ome runs. We are trying to hit ood line-drives in the gaps, but sometimes they just end up limbing Swanson said. Now we just need to get focused back so not just relying on our home runs.

ot something that can last us forever. So we need to get back what we had been o. 2 seed Vanderbilt (40-17) ill play No. 3 seed Texas SEC TOURNAMENT: VANDERBILT 7, MISSOURI 6 (10) Power surge is big surprise AP Rhett Wiseman (8) jumps into the air celebrating as he approaches home plate after he hit a walk off home run in the 10th inning. Wiseman walkoffis 4th Vandy homer ofday Adam Sparks SEC BASEBALL TOURNAMENT No.

2 VANDERBILT (40-17) vs. No. 3 TEXAS (44-10) When: 4:30 p.m. today here: Hoover (Ala.) Metropolitan Stadium SEC Network 560-AM, 95.5-FM NEXT GAME No. 4 MTSU (30-26) vs.

No. 1 Rice (35-19) hen 9 a.m. Thursday here Pete Taylor Park (Hattiesburg, iss.) Radio 89.5-FM Texas-San Antonio escapes first round with 9-7 victory SUSAN HATTIESBURG AMERICAN Kevin Dupree MTSU Dispatch THURSDAY 05 21 15.