MEMPHIS, Tenn. – The contest was not without its share of heroics, and a seventh-inning game-tying solo home run by utility player Jada Cody headlined the (RV) UCF softball team's thrilling late-inning 3-2 comeback win in nine innings against the Memphis Tigers Friday evening.
UCF's latest victory extended the Knights' win streak to eight consecutive games dating back to the team's 13-1 victory over the Tulsa Golden Hurricane April 16, and matching the team's longest win streak of the season (also eight straight wins, March 10-17). UCF has now emerged on the winning end of 15 of its last 16 games overall as well.
The Knights (34-19, 13-3 AAC) also improved to 2-2 in extra innings this season, clinching their second consecutive win in games that progress beyond the regulation seven innings on the heels of the team's 2-1 eight-inning win over the South Florida Bulls April 21.
With her team down to its final three outs in the top of the seventh inning and staring up at a 2-1 deficit on the Tigers Softball Complex left field videoboard, Cody came through for her team yet again.
The Murrieta, California, native swung at the first pitch she saw and blasted her seventh home run of the season, and 32nd of her career, over the left-center field fence to tie the game at two. The solo shot injected new life into a UCF team that had managed only a single run, courtesy of a Johneisha Rowe bases-loaded walk, through its first six innings of play.
With her 32nd career home run, Cody inched ever closer to a share of second place on the UCF all-time home run list, now trailing Jania Shinhoster's career total of 33 by just one.
The long ball also marked the 194th hit in Cody's four-plus-year career, followed by a timely ninth-inning double that marked her 195th career hit and boosted her to within five hits of becoming the 11th player in UCF history to accrue 200 hits in a Knights uniform.
After doubling in the ninth, a hit that moved Cody into a tie for fourth place on the UCF all-time doubles list with the 41st of her career, she would score the go-ahead run on a Tigers (8-40, 2-14) error induced by a ground ball off the bat of Aubrey Evans, marking UCF's first advantage of the evening.
The trio of runs proved to be just enough for the tandem of right-handers Sarah Willis and Grace Jewell. A Tigers two-run homer in the bottom of the fourth inning snapped the former's scoreless innings streak at 29 in a row, but Willis was able to limit the damage to just the two runs in her fifth consecutive start of at least six innings.
Head coach Cindy Ball-Malone turned to Grace Jewell in relief following the sixth, and the Chesapeake, Virginia, native slammed the door shut, tossing three scoreless innings while yielding only a single Tigers hit before her team scratched across the go-ahead run.
Together, the two also produced the Knights' eighth straight game, and 15th in their last 16, with two or fewer runs allowed, a stretch during which Willis, Jewell, Angelina DeVoe and Kaitlyn Felton have combined to produce a 1.21 team ERA (109.2 IP, 19 ER), striking out 70 and limiting their opposition to a .164 batting average-against.
UP NEXT
The Knights will go for the series win against the Memphis Tigers in a Saturday matinee tilt, with first pitch slated for 3 p.m. ET from Tigers Softball Complex.