The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga's path to the NCAA Division I softball tournament will be a bit more difficult Saturday in Greensboro, North Carolina.
The upside for UTC, though, is that at least there's still a path.
The Mocs, who won the Southern Conference regular-season championship last week, gave themselves a chance to play for the league tournament title by defeating third-seeded Samford 7-3 in an elimination game Friday evening. However, because they lost a 5-4 battle to tourney host and No. 2 seed UNC Greensboro in the winners-bracket final earlier in the day, the Mocs (40-14) will have to defeat the Spartans (33-24) twice on Saturday to win their 16th Socon tournament title.
Championship competition is set for a 1 p.m. start, with UNCG needing to win only that game to secure the title and the SoCon's automatic bid for the NCAA tourney, with the entire 64-team field to be revealed Sunday. If UTC wins, a second game would take place afterward.
In UTC's victory against Samford (24-32), Kendall Forsythe, Jayce Purdy and Acelynn Sellers hit home runs as the Mocs rallied after the Bulldogs went up 3-0 in the top of the first. Forsythe led off the bottom of the second with her seventh shot of the year, while Sellers had a two-run homer with two outs to make it 3-all. Purdy went deep in the bottom of the fourth, adding insurance runs after former Silverdale Baptist Academy standout Kaili Phillips had given UTC the lead by drawing a one-out walk, advancing to second on a passed ball and scoring on a throwing error.
UTC sophomore pitcher Peja Goold got the win to improve to 10-3 this season, striking out 11 batters in the final six innings after relieving Alyssa Lavdis.
In the day's first game, the Mocs led 3-1 after three innings on a two-run single by Olivia Lipari and an RBI single by Bayleigh Pitts, but the Spartans scored four runs in the top of the fourth to take a two-run lead. The Mocs got a run back on a solo homer by Sellers in the bottom half, but they got no closer.
Lipari and teammate Kailey Snell had two hits apiece in the loss as UNCG beat UTC for the second time in four meetings this year. In their regular-season series a month ago at UNCG, the Mocs won 6-3 in the opener and then 6-5 in nine innings before the Spartans won the third matchup 5-4 after trailing 4-1.
Contact Gene Henley at ghenley@timesfreepress.com.