TALLAHASSEE, Fla. – The Jacksonville State softball team's season came to an end on Saturday night, when the Gamecocks fell 8-2 to No. 25 Georgia in an elimination game in the NCAA Tallahassee Regional.
 
After using a mercy-rule win to oust Princeton from the tournament earlier in the day, the Gamecocks (41-12) ran out of gas in the second game of the day. The Bulldogs (35-22) scored early and held off JSU to advance to Sunday's championship game vs. host and No. 4 national seed Florida State.
 


JSU's 2017 season comes to a close after posting its 11th 40-win season in school history and winning the program's sixth Ohio Valley Conference regular season and its sixth OVC Tournament title. It advanced to the NCAA Division I Championship for the eighth time and the seventh in the past 10 years, while earning at least one regional win for the sixth time.
 
Seven seniors wore the JSU uniform for the final time on Saturday. Taylor West, Emily Church, Jamie McGuire, Taylor Sloan, Stephanie Lewis and Jordan Sims contributed to 161 wins and lost just 59 times, while winning three OVC regular season titles and two OVC Tournament crowns over the last four years.
 
The Bulldogs drew first blood, scoring two in the top of the second inning. The first came on a Mahlena O'Neal double, and they stretched the lead to 2-0 on a Cortni Emanuel squeeze bunt.
 
JSU cut its deficit in half in the home half of the second, when Whitney Gillespie took starter Amanda Ablan over the left field wall for a solo homer that made it a 2-1 game. Gillespie turned on Ablan's 2-2 pitch for her seventh homer of the season.
 
Georgia got two more runs in the third, the first on a Maeve McGuire sac fly and the second on a Lacey Summerlin solo homer that made it a 4-1 game.
 
JSU mounted a threat in the fourth and got one back, thanks to a sac fly from Lewis that scored pinch runner Anna Snider and brought JSU to within two again.
 
The Bulldogs put the game away in the sixth with four runs that made it an 8-2 game.
 
West (16-5) suffered the loss after allowing four runs, three earned, on six hits in 3 and 1/3 innings of work. Gillespie allowed four runs on five hits in three innings, while Faith Sims recorded two outs and didn't allow a run.
 
Kyle Bass (9-3) earned the win in relief for UGA, holing JSU hitless through 3 and 1/3 innings. She struck out five batters after entering in relief for Ablan, who gave up two runs on three hits in 3 and 2/3 innings.
 
The Bulldogs recorded 11 hits, with Cortni Emanuel leading the way with three of them.