The Red Raiders advanced to the winner's bracket of the Lubbock Regional.
The second game of the Lubbock Regional in the NCAA Softball Tournament was delayed for an extended period midway through, but the No. 11-seeded Texas Tech Red Raiders battled to a 10-3 win over Marist to advance into the winner's bracket.
The Red Raiders will be back on home turf Saturday at 2 p.m. CT for a matchup with Ole Miss.
After going down 1-0 after the first half inning, Texas Tech answered with nine unanswered runs before the game went into a delay as a dust storm blew into town. The locals call that a "haboob", or a mountainous cloud of dust rolling through the flat West Texas plains.
In the bottom of the first, catcher Jasmyn Burns got the scoring started with an RBI single. Logan Halleman - who terrorized the Red Fox defense with three stolen bases on the day - came around to score on a pair of errors an inning later, before Kaitlyn Terry drove in a run with a double. She was singled in a batter later by Mia Williams.
In the third, Taylor Pannell connected on her 10th home run of the season to score two. Mihyia Davis drove in another run off a single, then joined Halleman on the base paths to pad the lead.
Tech was in position to get the final outs necessary for a 9-1 run-rule win, but the weather delay allowed Marist to regroup and tack on two runs in the top of the fifth inning from a double by Haley Ahr.
Williams, who set the Red Raiders' single-season RBI record earlier this year, drove in another in the next frame.
In the circle, Terry (23-1) was credited with her team-high 23rd win after allowing two hits and one run while striking out five in 4.0 innings of work.
"A great day to play softball," head coach Gerry Glasco said postgame, seemingly half poking fun at the inclement weather while still admiring the community's support at Tracy Sellers Field.
"The crowd and the fans from Lubbock created a lot of excitement and it was just a fun environment. It's what college softball should be like - the tailgate out front with all the people and just masses of fans between the games all over the whole complex ... We're so appreciative of that."
Texas Tech now turns its attention to a Rebels team that beat Boston U 8-6 to open the regional.
"As a coach, you're never satisfied," Glasco added. "You always want to be better, and I know we can play far better than that, but on the other hand we did plenty of things good. We just need to clean it up a little bit tomorrow, pick it up each game as we go through."
