BATON ROUGE — If asked to testify about its frustrating and head-scratching 3-0 loss to Texas Tech in the first game of Friday's Baton Rouge Regional, Louisiana Tech should plead the fifth.

And for a couple of reasons.

First, the Techsters, shut out just once all season and otherwise never held to less than at least two runs scored in any other game this year, appeared bumfuzzled at the
plate. The batter's box is normally the comfort zone for this team. The rocking chair. The sweet spot.

This team has set offensive records only body odor could dream of.

"We didn't execute offensively in any way, shape, fashion, or form," Conference USA Coach of the Year Mark Montgomery said. "Those were not the swings we've been working on in the cages."

True. Anyone could see it.  In the moments following the loss, the Lady Techsters looked punch-drunk. Strangers in a foreign land. Superman after meeting kryptonite.

But while the Lady Techsters might not have immediately known how the loss had happened, everyone knew when it happened.

Fifth inning.

Scoreless game. Kimmie Atienza and Morgan Turkoly drew two-out walks and the 2019 C-USA Player of the Year, Jazlyn Crowder, was preparing for a 1-0 pitch.

"Right where I wanted it," she said. "I just didn't swing."

The pitch went by.

She knew it. So did everyone else with eyes as Crowder pranced down the third-base line, obviously disgusted that her bat hadn't done what it usually does. Swing. And hit.

The next pitch, she pounded over the fence in left, the hardest hit ball of the day by either team, by far. But the potential three-run homer was pulled foul.

Christy Crowder, the mother of the daughter and a woman who has an appreciation of how silly competition can make even the best of us look at times, actually smiled when asked about the missed chance on the 1-0 pitch.

"They were all up in their heads today," she said. "Everybody. All up in their heads."

Her daughter's groundout to shortstop on a 1-2 count ended the inning.

"So frustrating," Jaz said as she climbed onto the team bus an hour later.

What was left in question in the top of the fifth was decided in the bottom.

Eighth-place hitter Kelcy Leach, who reached base on all three of her at-bats despite having the lowest batting average by far, .242, of any other Texas Tech starter, singled to left the lead off the inning. She was sacrificed to second before leadoff hitter Karli Hamilton popped up a bunt for the second out.

Two outs. Runner on second. Scoreless game. Tech's right-handed starting pitcher Preslee Gallaway about to face the left-handed hitting Heaven Burton, who came into the game hitting .363.

Except Burton had been called out for being out of the batter's box on what would have been a base hit in the first inning. She'd grounded out to third her next at-bat.

So, against otherwise all conventional wisdom unless you know your players, Texas Tech head coach Adrian Gregory pinch-hit righthander Shelby Henderson, batting .167.

"She's a slapper," Gregory said of Burton, "and when they get called for being out of the box, they get rattled. So I sent up Shelby; she's a good hitter."

Gallaway walked Henderson, a fellow Texas and former opponent and travel ball teammate, on a 3-2 count.

"Just threw a bad pitch," said Gallaway, who Montgomery praised for pitching "a whale of a game" — but who came in second in the game's defining moment.

Texas Tech All-American first baseman Jessica Hartwell was on deck when Gallaway walked Henderson. Hartwell fouled off five 3-2 pitches before slapping a triple into the gap in right to score two runs.

"She hit a good pitch," Gallaway said.

"After all those fouls," Montgomery said, "she squared one up."

"After about the 10^th pitch I was thinking, 'I can do this all day,'" Hartwell said. "I was ready for that last one."

Jenny Chapman relieved and Trenity Edwards singled for the game's final run.

"With the lead," Edwards said, "I was relaxed and just wanted to put the ball in play."

The Red Raiders didn't threaten the rest of the way. But neither did the Techsters, who went 0-6 in their final two innings. When Texas Tech second baseman Zoe Jones laid out to catch a weak liner off the bat of pinch hitter Kailey Anderson toward the first base bag, the Lady Techsters' chances in day one were over.

The Lady Techsters had their chances. Texas Tech starter Erin Edmoundson was constantly behind in the count. For the game, she was 3-2 on eight hitters and threw 29 pitches in the first inning when LA Tech had two on with nobody out.

She got out of it.

Edmoundson threw 16 in the second as Tech got its leadoff hitter on, moved to second on a sacrifice, and still failed to score.

Then Edmoundson threw just six pitches in the third eight in the fourth, and 24 in the fateful fifth as the Lady Techsters continued to take big swings—with the wind blowing in. Constantly the waifish lefthander—she's 5-6 and can't weigh more than 120—pitched from behind the whole day and got the best offense in C-USA out with infield popups and weak outfield flies.

"And all she eats is blueberries," said Gregory. "Sometimes chicken. But she's a fighter."

"It was a big struggle at first," Edmoundsen said. "I settled in a little and got the wheels going."

Only a sophomore, Edmoundsen is 20-3, somehow slinging the ball from her little left arm in all sorts of off-speed, wiry ways. The Lady Techsters helped her by their non-compact swings on a hot afternoon with the wind blowing in.

What made the afternoon especially frustrating for the Techsters, on top of missed scoring opportunities in the first and second innings when Edmoudson was struggling to find the plate, going 3-2 on four of the first six batters she faced, was that they came in hot offensively.

But Friday, it was Brain Cramp City. Ball will do you that way sometimes.

"We didn't execute offensively in any way, shape, fashion, or form," Montgomery said. "Those were not the swings we've been working on in the cages."

The Lady Techsters have averaged more than six runs a game this season. They've shattered the programs' offensive records. But to get where they want to go—the World Series—they'll have to win four in a row. Starting with two today.

To do that, they'll have to score runs.