LAKE CHARLES— McNeese softball advanced to the winners' bracket with a 12-5 victory over Northwestern State Tuesday night of the opening day of the Southland Conference Tournament.
 
Third seed McNeese advances to face second seed Stephen F. Austin at 1:30 p.m. Wednesday.
 
"After giving up the early lead, we were just trying to get out of the first inning with little damage and stay composed," said McNeese head coach James Landreneau. "We knew they could do damage, it was a matter of us getting back in the dugout and try to fight our way back in. For us, we just needed to take one pitch at a time and try to chip our way back. We were able to take advantage of some mistakes they made and we put some good at bats together," Landreneau said.
 
Northwestern State (28-24) took an early lead in the top of the first inning when Julie Rawls, the third batter of the game sent an Alexsandra Flores pitch over the right centerfield fence that gave the Lady Demons a 3-0 lead. The home run marked her 10^th of the season.
 
McNeese (37-19) answered with four runs in the bottom half to the inning, taking advantage of four walks issued by the Lady Demon starter Mikayla Brown to take a 4-3 lead. Brown would pitch to seven batters before being replaced in the circle by E. C. Delafield.
 
Justyce McClain led the game off with a single before Erika Piancastelli and Morgan Catron drew walks to load the bases. Alexandria Saldivar's sac fly brought McClain home home for the first Cowgirl run. After a walk by Carleigh Chaumont loaded the bases again, Brenique Wright's bloop single over first base scored Piancastelli then walks to Turbeville and Lauren Brown scored the other two runs of the inning.
 
McNeese extended its lead to 6-3 in the bottom of the second after Piancastelli led the inning with a single through the left side then rounded the bases on a two run home run by Morgan Catron, her 13^th of the season.
 
Cayla Jones brought the Lady Demons back to within one run with her 10^th home run of the season over the left centerfield wall cut the Cowgirl lead to 6-5 with two outs in the top of the fourth.
 
McNeese broke the game open with a five run fourth inning that saw the Cowgirls bat around for the second time in the game to extend the lead to 11-5. The Cowgirls would score another run in the sixth for a 12-5 lead.
 
The Cowgirls scattered 12 hits with seven different players collecting at least one hit. McClain led McNeese with a 3-for-5 plate appearance while Saldivar, Lauren Brown and Morgan Catron getting two hits apiece. Oft the 11 Cowgirl RBI, Catron accounted for three.
McNeese took advantage of 14 walks issued by three Lady Demon pitchers, in particular- Carleigh Chaumont walked a game high five times. Catron and Turbeville walked three times apiece.
 
After giving up three runs in the first inning, Flores allowed one each in the third and fourth innings before going on to pick up the complete game victory to improve to 17-9 on the season. Flores gave up seven hits, two walks and struck out three.
 
Brown (10-9) took the loss after giving up four earned runs on two hits and allowed four walks. The Lady Demons were led at the plate by Sidney Harris' two hits with Rawls collecting three RBI.