No. 5 Softball suffers rare home loss, snaps 9-game win streak

Oregon's bats fell silent over the last four innings as they fell to Loyola Marymount 5-3 in a nonconference game at Jane Sanders Stadium Monday.

The loss snapped a nine-game winning streak for the Ducks, who are now 15-2 at home.

They stranded five runners while the visitors rode a four-run second inning to an upset victory, getting four innings over scoreless relief from their bullpen. The Ducks had just four hits all day.

The loss drops the No. 5 Ducks to 35-4. They're still in a three-way tie for first place in the Big Ten with UCLA and Northwestern at 9-1.

Even in defeat, Melyssa Lombardi's crew showed off their speed and aggressiveness. Leadoff hitter Kai Luschar walked twice and stole second both times. When she did it in the second inning, Rylee McCoy brought her home with a sacrifice fly. From second-- she took third and just kept on going.

When shortstop Paige Sinicki reached on a bunt single in the two-run first and stole second, that broke the team record for steals in a season at 127, remarkable for a squad that's also hit 62 home runs.

After LMU's four-run rally in the second, Lyndsey Grein came on in relief for the Webfoots, striking out the first batter she faced to snuff out the rally.

She gave up a fourth-inning solo home run to Kealani Caster but kept the Ducks in the game with five and one-third innings of one-hit pitching, striking out four and walking one.

Next for the Lady Webfoots comes a weekend series at Minnesota (14-23, 3-10.) This is a team on track for all its goals, ranked just below Texas, Florida, Oklahoma and Texas A&M in the ESPN /USA Softball Poll.

They battled. In the bottom of the seventh Dez Patmon walked and Remmington Hewitt scratched out an infield single to get the winning run to the plate, but the rally fizzled out there, one of the few times the Ducks have come up short all year.

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