Photo by Jake McNeill: Marshall second baseman Brynlee Dieken (left) looks to throw to first after tagging second base for an out during a Big South Conference softball game against Windom, Thursday in Marshall.

MARSHALL — The Marshall softball team wasn’t able to carry the momentum from its skid-snapping win on Tuesday into its Big South Conference matchup against Windom on Thursday. The Tigers played a strong defensive game for the final five innings, but a slow start was too much for the Tigers to overcome in a 10-1 loss.

“In practice, we’ve been focusing on winning innings. Unfortunately we lost those first two innings, but after that we settled in,” Marshall head coach Stacey Baedke said. “We were able to win the last two, which is what we’ve been working on, we just need to try and get it to a full seven innings that we win.”

Baedke added that it was disappointing to lose after the team picked up a pair of wins over Worthington on Tuesday, 16-0 in four innings and 6-1, but she felt that the girls did plenty of good things on Thursday that they can hopefully carry into their senior day on Saturday.

Freshman third baseman Kinsley Bitker continued to establish herself as a key part of the lineup in Thursday’s game, leading the Tigers at the plate with two doubles and an RBI. Catcher Bailynn Parsons was the lone other Tiger with a hit, singling twice.

The Tigers fell into an early hole when Windom rattled off four singles and a two-out double to push across four runs in the first inning. The Eagles added another pair of singles and a two-run double before Marshall made a pitching change in the second, but an error and an RBI single each scored another run to put the Tigers in an eight-run deficit.

Alissa Moen pitched the first 1 1/3 innings for Marshall, surrendering eight earned runs on eight hits with a pair of strikeouts. Sara Dallmann threw the remainder of the game, giving up a pair of earned runs on six hits with two walks and five strikeouts.

After Windom scored one run in each of the next two innings, Marshall got on the scoreboard in the bottom of the fourth to prevent the mercy rule. With two outs, Dallmann reached base on a dropped third strike and advanced to second on a wild pitch. Bitker then hit a double to deep right field to send Dallmann home.

Marshall continued to pick things up at the plate from there. Parsons got all the way to third base in the fifth inning, Dallmann had a fly out in the sixth that fell just shy of the centerfield wall, and the Tigers loaded the bases in the seventh with a Bitker double, a Parsons single and a Morgan walk before a strikeout ended the game.

“We started to swing at strikes and let the balls go by,” Baedke said of the difference in her team’s hitting down the stretch. “We punched in toward the end of the game and we were able to get a few base hits to get ourselves in position to score some runs.”

Marshall falls to 2-9 and next hosts Waseca on Saturday for Senior Day. The doubleheader is slated to begin at noon after the team celebrates its lone senior, Moen.

BOX SCORE

BATTING

S. Dallmann: 0-3, R, SO; K. Bitker: 2-3 (2 2B), RBI, SO; B. Parsons: 2-3; H. Kirchner: 0-2, BB, 2 SO; J. Morgan: 0-2, BB.

PITCHING

A. Moen: 1.1 IP, 8 H, 8 R, 8 ER, 2 SO; S. Dallmann: 5.2 IP, 6 H, 2 R, 2 ER, 2 BB, 5 SO.