Rally comes up short, Griz fall to Bears

Saturday, April 10

Greeley, Colo.

Noon

Montana

9-24, 3-6

Northern Colorado

9-19, 5-4

Montana

Northern Colorado

4/10/2021 4:06:00 PM | Softball

Box Score

By: Montana Sports Information

The Montana softball team dropped the final game of its Big Sky Conference series at Northern Colorado on Saturday afternoon, falling 9-7 to the Bears at Gloria Rodriguez Field in Greeley.

The Grizzlies (9-24, 3-6 BSC) fell behind 4-0, 6-1 and 8-2 before mounting a seventh-inning rally that brought the go-ahead run to the plate.

Montana lost all three games to Northern Colorado (9-19, 5-4 BSC) and has dropped six straight league contests after opening 3-0.

Coming off 9-1 and 7-4 setbacks on Friday, Montana fell behind on Saturday when the Bears put up four runs in the bottom of the second off starter Tristin Achenbach.

Montana scored one in the third on an outfield error and another in the fourth on a two-out steal attempt that allowed a runner to score from third.

Northern Colorado, which batted .413 for the series, kept scoring and took an 8-2 lead into the sixth.

The Grizzlies scored twice in the sixth, on Maygen McGrath's ninth home run of the season and on an RBI double by McKenna Tjaden.

Tjaden's double extended her hitting streak to 10 games. It marks just the 11th time in program history a player has had a hitting streak reach 10.

Trailing 9-4 going into the seventh, Montana put up five hits and scored three runs. McGrath had an RBI ground out, Cami Sellers an RBI double and Kylie Becker an RBI single.

With runners on first and second and the go-ahead run at the plate, the game ended on a fly out.

Becker and Jessica McAlister both had three hits in the game, Jaxie Klucewich and Kendall Curtis two each at the top of the lineup as the Grizzlies outhit the Bears 13-12.

Curtis went 6 for 11 in the series. Becker, McAlister and McGrath, who drove in a team-high three runs on Saturday, all had four hits.

Montana will play a Wednesday doubleheader against Carroll, then host Southern Utah (13-19, 5-1 BSC) next weekend at Grizzly Softball Field.