Montana falls twice at Troy Cox Classic

Saturday, February 15

Las Cruces, N.M.

9 AM

Montana

2-6

Nebraska

6-2

Montana

Nebraska

Photo by: Tommy Martino/University of Montana

2/15/2025 6:55:00 PM | Softball

Box Score 1 Box Score 2

By: Montana Sports Information

The Montana softball team competed well on Saturday but still dropped a pair of games as the Grizzlies opened play at the Troy Cox Classic in Las Cruces, N.M.

Montana jumped out to a 4-0 lead on No. 18 Nebraska and was still up 4-1 in the bottom of the fourth when the Cornhuskers' bats came alive, powering them to a 13-5, six-inning victory.

The Grizzlies then faced Texas A&M-Corpus Christi, scored early and held a lead into the fifth before the Islanders put up three runs on their way to a 4-3 victory.

"We're doing a lot of things well but we're still not playing a complete game, where we're playing well on both sides of the ball," said coach Stef Ewing.

"We have to be able to combine the offense that we had in the Nebraska game with the pitching that we had in the Corpus Christi game. We're getting there. We're making progress."

Facing a high-powered Nebraska team that defeated Texas A&M-Corpus Christi and New Mexico State by a combined score of 30-1 on Friday, it was the Grizzlies who struck first on Saturday.

Aided by two Cornhusker errors that left two on with one out in the top of the first, the Grizzlies got on the board when Sveva Sweeney drove in Presley Jantzi with a single through the right side.

Hannah Jablonski then stepped up and hit the seventh home run of her career, a three-run shot over the fence in left that put Montana up 4-0.

The Grizzlies would hold a lead into the bottom of the fourth thanks to Brianna Lachermeier, who made her first Division I start against Nebraska after pitching just 4 2/3 innings previously this season.

She struck out two while working a 1-2-3 bottom of the first, gave up a run in the second and got out of a bases-loaded jam with one out in the third to take a 4-1 lead into the fourth.

"Bri did a good job and threw the best she's thrown all year for us," said Ewing. "It was back-and-forth and we were right in the game with them. We competed with them."

Nebraska flexed in the bottom of the fourth, quickly tying the game on three straight solo home runs. The first nine batters in the inning reached base, eight coming by base hit.

When the inning was over, after Lachermeier had been replaced by Siona Halwani, who was later replaced in the inning by Grace Hardy, Nebraska led 8-4.

"That's a high-powered offense and a really good team that's going to score a lot of runs," said Ewing.

Much to its credit, Montana answered right back, with Grace Lopez leading off the top of the fifth with a double to center, her first extra-base hit as a Grizzly.

Lopez advanced to third on a fly out by Anna Cockhill, then scored on a pinch-hit single by Jantzi to make it 8-5, matching the most runs Montana has ever scored against a ranked opponent.

But Nebraska's bats were too much. The Cornhuskers scored twice more in the fifth on three hits, three times on three hits in the sixth to win it.

Jablonski had two hits against Nebraska and got Montana rolling early again against the Islanders, hitting a two-out, two-run double that scored Madison Tarrant and Sweeney, both of whom had singled.

That gave an early 2-0 lead to Hardy, a senior who is pitching as a Grizzly for the first time this season. She entered the game with 7 2/3 innings thrown in 2025 and was making her first start.

And she was fantastic, allowing three hits and one run over four innings, sending Montana to the fifth with a 2-1 lead. "She pitched great for four innings," said Ewing, "which is the most she's thrown."

Corpus Christi won it in the top of the fifth, a two-run double and two Montana errors giving the Islanders a 4-2 lead.

"We made some mistakes in the Corpus Christi game," said Ewing. "We ran ourselves out of an inning, we made some base-running mistakes, made some mistakes defensively.

"I told the team after the game, we have to be able to learn from those mistakes. We have to talk about them, learn from them and not make them again. That's how we're going to become a better team."

Montana pulled within a run at 4-3 in the bottom of the fifth when Tarrant singled up the middle to score Lopez, but the Grizzlies sent just six batters to the plate in the sixth and seventh innings.

"They made a pitching change in the fifth inning and we only had three out of nine quality at-bats against her. Before that, we had a ton of quality at-bats," said Ewing.

"As the game got tight, we pressed a little bit. We have to be able to stay relaxed no matter what the score is. That's going to come with experience of being in those one-run games."

Jantzi, Tarrant, Jablonski and Jessica Stanfield each had two hits as Montana out-hit Texas A&M-Corpus Christi 11-6.

Montana will face Nebraska again on Sunday morning at 9 a.m., then play a doubleheader against New Mexico State on Monday afternoon.