By Tim Tassa -- Daily Staff Writer

WINCHESTER — Having held them to just one run in two games, Sherando starting pitcher junior Nicole Musser has left the Pioneers feeling clueless.

"We've hit faster pitching, we've hit slower pitching," Millbrook head coach Michelle Long said.

But Musser, presumably throwing speeds somewhere in between, struck out six batters over seven innings and limited Millbrook to just three hits on Thursday, guiding the Warriors' 4-0 Northwestern District softball win.

And while Musser said she did it by hitting spots — working all areas of the plate — Millbrook couldn't find the in-game answers to thwart her dominant performance, paired with a strong outing by their own ace, Nicole Daily.

"If I knew that, we wouldn't be in this predicament. I don't really know," said Long of the team's struggles against Musser.

"I'm not really sure what it is about Nicole that just stymies us like that."

Helping the Warriors improve to 10-9, 7-6 on the season, Musser walked just one batter and held Millbrook hitless in the first, fourth, fifth and sixth innings. In a loss at home on April 10, Musser limited the Pioneers to just one run, despite her team's lack of run production.

However, getting support by way of a run in the top of the third inning and three insurance runs in the top of the seventh, Musser had more than enough offense to let the Warriors' defense do the work.

"I felt good, I felt like I was throwing a really good game. I just knew that I had to throw hard and use pitches against them," Musser said.

"I was very confident. When we started hitting and everything, all I thought about when I went in there is to hold them and to do whatever I could to strike them out."

Through two innings, Daily, who recorded five consecutive outs via the strikeout in the first and second, looked to be the hurler of the moment from the circle. She went on to strike out 11 Warriors, while surrendering seven hits.

But after tweaking her neck in the top of the second on a ground ball over her head, Daily found trouble in the third. In the inning, Sherando's Amanda Lutz singled to right and advanced to second on a wild pitch. Two batters later, Kourtney Paige patiently slapped a ground ball between second and first, driving in Lutz for a 1-0 lead.

"When I got up there she kept throwing me outside, and I kind of got used to it, so I just stepped to it like my coach told me to," said Paige, who finished the game 2-for-4 with two RBIs and a run scored.

"We work on inside and outside every day at practice and that helps us."

Musser's performance was aided by strong defensive play that yielded zero errors. Roaming center field, Sarah Whitacre had a timely backhanded running grab with two outs and a runner on first in the bottom of the third, on a shot by Millbrook's Stephanie Curry.

Musser produced seven fly-ball outs on the day and got Daily, Millbrook's No. 3 batter, to strike out three times.

"It was a great team win I thought, we hit the ball consistently," Sherando head coach Erin Bundrick said.

"I thought our defense was really strong. We had a couple plays in the outfield that could've really resulted in more runs for them, but I was happy to see our outfielders really stretching it."

The Pioneers and Warriors traded scoreless frames until the top of the seventh, when Sherando took advantage of its opponents' defensive lapses.

Whitacre walked, followed by a single by Lutz. Then, after Brittany Larrick's strikeout, Paige added her second RBI of the game on a single to right. An error on the throw scored Lutz, increasing the lead to 3-0.

Lutz finished the game 2-for-4 with a pair of runs.

"The basic bottom line is that last inning we let get out of hand," Long said of her team, which fell to 10-8, 8-5 on the season.

"We gave them a lot of opportunities to get that kind of rally going, and when you give a good team like Sherando opportunities, they're going to take them and they are going to take them and run. And the bottom line is that we didn't execute tonight at all."

*Contact Tim Tassa at ttassa@nvdaily.com

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