MURFREESBORO, Tenn. ? The University of South Alabama softball team dropped a 1-0 decision to tournament host Middle Tennessee Wednesday night in the opening round of the 2007 Sun Belt Conference Tournament held at Blue Raider Field.

Middle Tennessee (29-28) will now move on to play eighth-seeded Florida International in the winners bracket at 5:30 p.m., while South Alabama (36-22) will take on top-seeded Florida Atlantic at 12:30 p.m. an elimination game.  FIU pulled off a first round upset when they rallied back from a five run deficit to defeat the Owls 12-9 in 15 innings.

"I thought (Lindsay Vander Lught) did a really good job against us tonight," said South Alabama softball head coach Becky Clark.  "She did a great job of keeping the ball down and keeping us off balance.  They were able to get the momentum and we just couldn't get it back.  I was proud of my team.  I thought we played really hard and all things considered had a lot of poise on the field.  It just didn't work out for us tonight."

South Alabama looked as if it was going to get on the scoreboard first in the top of the fourth with a runner at second.  Tara Donaldson singled to right, but Stevens was thrown out at the plate.

Middle Tennessee then broke the scoreless tie in the bottom of the inning with an unearned run.  Blue Raider left fielder Caitlin McLure reached on a Jaguar throwing error to start the inning and then advanced all the way to third on a sacrifice bunt by Whitney Darlington.  McLure then came into score and put Middle Tennessee up 1-0 on a RBI double to center by Martha Davis.

The unearned run proved to be the difference as Middle Tennessee’s Lindsay Vander Lught (20-19) held the Jags in check the rest of the way and went on to pick up the complete game victory.  In her seven innings of work, Vander Lught struck out six Jag batters and held USA to just four hits.  Linden Jones (20-11) went the distance as well and took the loss for USA.