University of North Texas
4-5
New Mexico
4-10
Softball Collects Two Wins on Friday
2/23/2024 11:16:00 PM | Softball
DENTON, Texas – UNT softball opened its home invitational with a 3-1 win over New Mexico and 7-5 win over Minnesota on Friday at Lovelace Stadium.
"We put in a good week of hard work and preparation," head coach Rodney DeLong said. "We bounced back and that's what good programs do – they overcome failure, and they get better because of it."
The Mean Green (5-5) won back-to-back contests for the first time this season while it also collected its first win over a Power Five opponent in 2024.
McKenzie Wagoner (W, 2-3) spun a complete-game victory over the Lobos (4-10) with eight strikeouts over 7.0 innings. She allowed one earned run on three hits and zero walks, all season-low marks in outings beyond 4.0 innings pitched.
North Texas posted two runs in the bottom of the sixth inning against the Golden Gophers (4-5) with a sacrifice fly from Cierra Simon and an RBI single by Kat Ibarra. Mackenzie Childers (W, 2-2) completed the final 1.2 innings with four strikeouts.
Ibarra, Mikayla Smith and Molly Rainey each tallied hits in both games with the trio contributing a combined eight hits, four RBI and three runs scored.
Kalei Christensen provided a pair of RBI against Minnesota to match the ninth-best career total in UNT history at 95. She also scored her 90th career run to move inside the top-10 in program history.
UP NEXT
The Mean Green return to Lovelace Stadium for day two of the UNT Invite with New Mexico at 4:30 p.m. and Texas Tech at 7 p.m. All games can be followed at meangreenstats.com.
Saturday will be broken into two ticketing sessions and Lovelace Stadium will be cleared of all fans after the third game of the day. For full tournament schedule and ticket information, please visit our Tournament Central page.
Team Stats
Pitching:
W: Wagoner, McKenzie (2-3)
L: SNOW, Taylor (1-4)
Batting:
2B: ARCHULETA, Ashley 1
RBI: ARCHULETA, Ashley 1
SH: CHAVEZ, Keyannah 1
Base Running:
RUNS: HATHOOT, Rachael 1
HBP: HATHOOT, Rachael 1 ; YEATTS, Chloe 2
Batting:
RBI: Rainey, Molly 1 ; Gamble, Kailey 1 ; Smith, Mikayla 1
Base Running:
RUNS: Ibarra, Kat 1 ; Nicholson, Rylee 1 ; Sparks, Tatum 1
SB: Ibarra, Kat 1
