BATON ROUGE, La. — The 17th-ranked LSU Tigers scored four runs in the 1st inning and kept Central Arkansas scoreless through the first five as the Tigers defeated the Bears 8-1 in the final game of the Tiger Classic on Sunday.

"I thought for having such a young team, I thought we played well in spots this weekend," said UCA head coach David Kuhn, whose team beat SIU-Edwardsville and also lost to Murray State, Oklahoma State and Minnesota in the opening weekend of play. "I thought Ciara Clampitt and Kayla Gomness did really well in the circle – I thought those two were the highlight of the weekend. We played hard and gave good effort, we just need to minimize our mistakes and have a little more timely hitting."

LSU (4-2) added a pair of runs in the 3rd and another in the 4th to go up 7-0 on UCA (1-4), but the Bears ended the Tigers' shutout bid in the top of the 5th. After Amy Gunnells was hit by a pitch, Sam Forrest doubled to deep left field to score Gunnells for the Bears' lone run. Sarah Bigej followed by reaching on hit by pitch, but Hannah Stirton's fly ball to left was caught to end the Bears' inning.

The Tigers answered in the bottom half of the inning with a solo home run from Sahvanna Jaquish for the game's final score. Kelsee Selman got the win for LSU, while Kylee Studioso took the loss for the Bears. Ciara Clampitt threw 2.1 innings in relief for the Bears, striking out a pair and allowing no earned runs.


Forrest, Bigej, Taylor Dear, and Jessie Taylor each recorded hits for the Bears, and Bigej, Hayley Parker and Randi Wallace each reached via walk.

Dear was named to the All-Tournament team after recording a team-high five hits in the tournament, going 5 for 15.

UCA will travel to Lafayette, La. next week to play in the Ragin' Cajun Invitational where they'll meet Valparaiso, Boston College, No. 4 Michigan and No. 15 Louisiana-Lafayette.