After losing a late lead to fall 9-8 to Alvin, the Lady Leopards came back with a 6-5 win over No. 30-ranked Navarro, followed by a 2-1 win over San Jacinto, which beat Temple this year, to close the two-day Temple College Tournament and improve to 9-8 this season.

“We haven’t had the game where it’s all come together - the pitching, the hitting, the defense - until today,” Temple coach Larry Hennig said. “We just hadn’t been very focused. We still have a long ways to go, but we got it done today.”

The win against Navarro might prove to be a crucial moment in the Lady Leopards’ season. Temple had to come from behind twice to tie the game, then pushed across the eventual winning run in the bottom of the sixth inning.

With one out, Lindsay Matt reached on a bunt single, advanced to second on an error that allowed Victoria Recek to reach first, and scored on Alexa Lyday’s flyout to right.

The test for Temple came in the top of the seventh as the Lady Dawgs began to threaten. The Lady Leopards have shown signs of struggling late, as Alvin had won the previous game in the final inning, and four more Temple losses had come when opponents scored the go-ahead run in the fifth inning or later.

So when Cassandra Marquez and April Petrino had back-to-back singles to put runners on first and second with no outs, Hennig thought about going to his bullpen to replace pitcher Samantha Meyer (Rockdale).

“We have already put in two pitchers and were warming up a third,” Hennig said. “Sam is the type of pitcher that has a very specific spot. And when she hits it, she’s really untouchable, but if she’s a little off they are going to knock her around. So when they hit a couple hard off her you think, ‘Well, does she have it out of her system? Is she going to make quality pitches?’”

It was indeed out of Meyer’s system. After Lindsey Cunningham bunted both runners into scoring position, Meyer struck out cleanup hitter Samantha Stampley and ended the game by getting Amye Patrick to fly out to left.

“She hasn’t been as good lately as she was at the beginning of the season,” Hennig said of Meyer. “And there’s every reason she shouldn’t have pitched well: The wind is blowing the wrong direction, and she’s beat up from when she pitched before. But she’s very hard on herself, she stepped up and got it done and that’s encouraging.”

Then Amanda Mayfield had her second dominating performance of the tournament, picking up the win against San Jacinto by allowing one unearned run, five hits and one walk in seven innings.

But Temple’s offense had its own problems trying to hit San Jacinto’s Tasha Rotramel, who through the first six innings had allowed just four hits.

The Lady Leopards were able to knock a run home in the first inning when Matt and Recek had back-to-back singles to start things off. Lyday sacrificed the runners over and Heather Mosser walked to load the bases.

Mayfield grounded back to the pitcher, who forced Matt at home, but on the attempt for the double play the throw was slightly off target, allowing Recek to score.

San Jac tied the game in the fourth, but the Lady Leopards finally grabbed the victory in the bottom of the seventh.

Troy product Shelby Shepperd started the inning with a bloop single to left, Courtney DeLaRosa (Cameron Yoe) singled to right, and Matt loaded the bases when neither third baseman Jennifer Walsh nor shortstop Brittany Boren fielded her grounder cleanly.

San Jacinto got the first out on a force at the plate, but then Lyday ended it with a solid shot to right field.

“Alexa is banged up and had a bruise on her shin that looked like a watermelon,” Hennig said. “I didn’t even know if she’d be able to go and she gets the game-winning hit. And I mean, she roped it.”

Though the Lady Leopards finished the tournament with three wins and three losses, Hennig still was looking at the bigger picture, including two dominating wins by Mayfield, home runs by Mosser and Mayfield, and an offense that has been able to hit solid pitching.

“This team continues to show signs of brilliance,” he said. “Amanda has certainly been a nice surprise in the tournament and Matt just continues to amaze me by finding ways to reach base. You like to win games, but looking back the last two days you look for signs of your team developing. Winning those close games, doing some small things and beating good teams are good signs.”

And Hennig said that at times he saw signs that the team he has now looks as good as the 2006 team, which finished the regular season ranked No. 1 in the country.

“I think about the teams before and they had that ‘just-win’ mentality,” he said. “They’ve always had that confidence. We have good teams that find ways to win games. That’s what we do here. The girls showed a lot of growth today and the pitching was encouraging in spots. That’s good news for us and bad news for everybody else.

“But the first thing I told the girls after the Alvin game is it’s still February and there’s still a lot of games to be played. The main thing right now is you can’t have any real high highs or any real low lows.”

The Lady Leopards will play at San Jacinto on Wednesday and won’t return to action at TC until March 8, when they host Cisco in the Northern Texas Junior College Athletic Conference opener.

mhood@temple-telegram.com