MAGNOLIA, Ark. – As the three seed in the region and sixth team in the nation, Augustana softball completed the sweep of the NCAA Central Region tournament with a 4-0 defeat of Missouri Southern State on Saturday afternoon.
 
The win qualifies the Vikings for its second straight Super Regional tournament appearance where they are set to face Central Oklahoma on May 15 and 16. It also improves their season record to 49-9 overall and pushes the team's win streak to 24 in a row.
 
Augustana collected seven hits off the Lions as Lexi Lander and Stella Harber each tallied two apiece and Andrea Cain, Desi Cuevas and Ella Cooper combined for three. Cain and Harber totaled four RBI between them as Cain and Dierks each drew a walk and Cuevas and Cooper both logged a stolen base.
 
Grace Glanzer took the win in the circle after seven innings pitched. She struck out seven of her just 24 batters faced while throwing 85 pitches on the day.
 
As the visiting team on the scoreboard, Cuevas knocked an early base hit and stole her way to second base in the first inning, but the inning would stall there.
 
Neither team would get past second base—or score—until the top of the fourth. An error and a wild pitch put Hailey Houston on second base just before Cooper knocked a single through the left side and stole second to put two runners in scoring position. That brought up Harber, who knocked a base hit through the right side to score both runners and officially open up scoring at 2-0.
 
The Lions again fell in 1-2-3 fashion—as they did five times in seven innings—as Glanzer continued to light it up from the pitching mound. But the Vikings were also unable to score…until the top of the seventh.
 
Liz Dierks drew a four-pitch walk, forcing a pitching change and bringing Cain up to bat. Facing a full count, the junior smoked a two-run homer out of the park to clear the bases and put the Vikings up by the eventual-final score of 4-0.
 
MSSU was able to put runners on first and third in the bottom half of action, but a foul out to Cooper and a fly out to Cuevas would end things and advance the Vikings postseason to another weekend.