By Angie Ledbetter

The No. 5 South Panola Lady Tigers shut out Tennessee’s No. 2 St. Benedict in non-district action Friday, 2-0.

The Lady Tigers (11-2, 1-0) scored in bottom of the fourth on errors by St. Benedict.

Marla Rudd, Max Preps player of the week, and Amanda Ivy scored on pitching errors as recent East Mississippi CC signee Meri Morgan Fortune reached first.

On the mound, it was a pitching duel between South Panola’s Nicole Fullilove and St. Benedict’s Hannah Dennis.

Fullilove fanned seven batters, allowed two hits and three walks. Dennis had five strikeouts, one walk and two hits.

The Lady Tigers had two runs, two hits, no errors, left three on base and one earned run.

The Lady Eagles (8-6-2) had two hits, five left on base and two errors.

Lady Tiger Head Coach Ashleigh Hicks told the team after the game it was not their best game but they had a lot of things “out of whack” right now.

“The people that stepped in did a great job. I’m very proud of you especially since we didn’t have a good practice this week due to the weather. This was big and you had a lot of things against you, not being able to practice and having one of your senior leaders not here.”

Hicks said this week was not their best week as far as practice because they had to use the football field, two players had injured fingers and Lauren Calvert was absent with the flu.

“This was a difficult game coming into but that just shows where they are. Mentally they forget all those negative things, hang, get up and play ball.”

The junior varsity team lost to St. Benedict 2-0. They had two hits.

The Lady Tigers will host a tough No. 3 ranked Lake Cormorant team (11-2) tonight in games that start at 5 with the junior varsity game followed by the varsity at 6.