A 24-minute half-inning that saw 11 SLU Lions come to the plate spelled disaster for Sam Houston in a 7-5 loss to Southeastern Louisiana at the Bearkat Softball Complex Saturday afternoon.

The Bearkats opened the series with a pair of victories Friday and left the stadium with their first Southland series victory of the season. The Sam women won five of their six games this week as they now stand 12-22 for the year and 4-8 in league action.

After the Kats jumped out to a quick lead with four runs in the bottom of the first inning, Lion first baseball Amber Sather led off the top of the second with double to center field. The blast started a series of unfortunate events that saw Southeastern Louisiana score six runs. Five of the tallies were unearned after three errors in the inning.

Sam Houston appeared off to a solid start with catcher Katie Doerre and shortstop Tiffany Castillo collecting run-scoring singles and the Kats adding two more runs on a sacrifice fly to center field by designated player Ashley Goetz and a ground ball to short by first baseman Codi Carpenter.

The explosion, much like Sam Houston's eight-run first inning in the opening game of the series Friday afternoon, chased SLU started Madison Vise after she had faced four batters with no outs. Her replacement, Taylor Bishop ended the inning and went on to earn the victory in the circle.

The Bearkats cut the margin to one run when Doerre tripled with one out in the third inning and scored on a Lion error on a ground ball by Castillo. Back-to-back doubles with one out in the top of the sixth inning put Southeastern Louisiana back up by a pair of runs.

Sam Houston ended the day with seven hits with Doerre going 2-for-4. Jordan Franks (1-3) was the loser in the circle. Lindsey McLeod struck out six Lions in her five and one-third innings in relief.

Next up for the Sam Houston softball team is a three-game Southland Conference series at Texas A&M-Corpus Christi.