CANYON, Texas –  The top ranked Lady Buffs of West Texas A&M showed their resiliency again, this time with their season on the line as Allie Smith singled up the middle with the bases loaded and one out for a walkoff win to force a winner-take-all South Central Regional Title game against Colorado Mesa on Saturday afternoon at Schaeffer Park. The Lady Buffs move to 55-3 on the season while the Mavericks fall to 40-12 with the final matchup coming up next.
 
The Mavericks started off the scoring in the top of the second inning as Zoey Pakes registered the first hit of the game with a single up the middle with two outs followed by a Kellie Mrofcza RBI double down the left field line to score pinch-runner Tiyera Hall for the 1-0 lead. The Lady Buffs threatened in the home half of the second as they used a Kourtney Coveney double off of the left field wall with one out and a walk to Shayne Starkey to put runners on first and second but a pair of flyouts ended the threat with CMU leading 1-0.
 
CMU capitalized on a pair of WT errors in the top of the third inning with two outs to extend their lead to 2-0. Sitter looked to take the momentum away to start the bottom of the third as the senior doubled off of the black monster in left field but CMU's McKenzie Surface responded with three straight outs including a double play to end the inning with an out at third on a tag-up attempt to head into the fourth with the Mavericks leading 2-0.
 
The Lady Buffs looked to take advantage of a Mavericks error to leadoff the home half of the fourth inning as Hardin reached on a fielding error followed by an Allie Smith to deep center field, Surface forced a flyout to center field for the first out followed by back-to-back strikeouts to end another WT threat with the Mavericks leading 2-0. WT put their seventh base runner of the game on in the fifth as Sitter walked again with one out followed by an Ibrahim fly ball to the wall in left to move the runner up 60 feet but Surface forced a check-swing groundout to third to end the inning, 2-0.
 
It appeared that the WT defense swung the momentum in the top of the sixth as CMU was working toward more runs before Britany Cruz gunned down a base-runner trying to take third for the second out of the inning. A full-count walk ended Kilee Halbert's afternoon with a runner on first and second with two outs, Mrofcza put together another good at-bat with an RBI single down the left field line and another hit to load the bases before Tori Bayer responded with a strikeout to end the inning, 3-0.
 
The Lady Buffs finally found some offense in the home half of the sixth as Hardin connected on her 22^nd homerun of the season, a moon shot to left center to lead off the inning to cut the lead to 3-1. The Mavericks responded with two straight outs before Briana Garza kept the inning alive with a pinch-hit single to short but a popup to Mikayla Kovac at shortstop ended the inning with the Mavericks leading 3-1.
 
Gehle led off the seventh with a bloop double to center field followed by a single up the middle by Sitter to cut the lead to 3-2 with no outs, Surface forced a fielder's choice to get the lead runner followed by a walk to Lacey Taylor to put runners at first and second. The Mavericks elected to pitch-around Hardin to load the bases before Smith ended the game with a two-run single up the middle for the 4-3 lead. Bayer picked up the win (17-0) for the Lady Buffs, giving up no runs on three hits with no walks and a strikeout in her 1.1 innings of work.