FLORENCE, Ala. – Combining a stellar day at the plate with excellent defensive effort, the Central Arkansas softball team opened its series with North Alabama with a 9-2 win on Friday. Seven Bears logged hits, including three multi-hit efforts.
 
The win improved the Bears to 19-7 on the year, now 4-0 in ASUN games. Morgan Nelson and Mary Kate Brown each hit home runs in the victory, and the Bears pulled of their first triple play in program history, wiping up the Lions in the fifth.
 
It took three innings for either team to score, and for the third time in four conference games, the Bears were first on the scoreboard. Jenna Wildeman got on board with a single to lead off the third inning, the first of a 3-for-4 day for the redshirt junior. Wildeman and Tremere Harris then pulled off a textbook hit and run, as Harris blasted one into right center, allowing Wildeman to score from first base. Two batters later, Harris would score off the bat of Madi Young, who hit a single and made it to second when the defense tried for the play at home. Then, with two outs, Nelson exploded for her seventh homer of the year, demolishing one to left center to score two more to build a quick 4-0 lead. North Alabama would score in the home half of the inning, but still trailed multiple runs early.
 
Five straight at bats in the fifth established and moved runners, eventually culminating in an RBI single by Harris and an RBI groundout by Kylie Griffin to stretch the lead to five. Walks from Janiah Wilson and Josie Willingham put a runner in scoring position, then back-to-back singles by Wildeman and Harris and the groundout by Griffin opened up the lead.
 
Brown opened up the fifth with her first homer of the season, a solo shot to stretch the lead further. The home run made her the ninth Bear to hit a long ball this year, and the 16^th home run by the team.
 
As the home team took the field in the bottom of the fifth, the Lions were looking to generate any kind of offense to start cutting into the lead. North Alabama led off with a single, and the batter was moved over to second on another single. But then, disaster struck for the Lions, as the third batter lined out to Griffin, who caught both runners off guard by throwing to Nelson at first, who whipped it to Brown at second to complete the triple play. In addition to being the first in program history, it was just the third three-out play in the country this season.
 
Central Arkansas added two more runs before the end of the game, on a Griffin groundout in the sixth and a Josie Willingham double in the seventh, putting the game out of reach with a 9-2 final score.
 
The Bears have won four in a row, and five in their last six as the series against the Lions progresses. Central Arkansas has three games of double-digit hits in three of its last six, and a fourth-straight game with at least one home run, the third-straight with multiple homers.
 
Saturday has two more games on the schedule against the Lions, a doubleheader currently starting at 1 p.m.