ATHENS, Ga. - The 12th-ranked Georgia softball team run ruled Georgia Southern 9-1 in five innings Wednesday evening at Jack Turner Stadium.

Georgia improves to 32-8 on the season with the victory.

Junior Madison Kerpics (12-5) earned the victory in her start, working four shutout innings, allowing three hits. Kerpics struck out eight and walked just one. Freshman Destin Howard worked the final inning, allowoing one run.

The offense out-hit the Eagles 6-3 Wednesday. Lyndi Rae Davis led the charge with two hits, one of which was a grand slam in the fourth inning. Dallis Goodnight and Ellie Armistead were responsible for two RBI each at the top and bottom of the lineup.

Georgia put up five runs in the second to jump out to a big lead early. With bases loaded and one out, Armistead singled to left to plate two. The next batter, Goodnight, sent a base hit back up the middle to drive in two more and bring the lead to 4-0. Goodnight proceeded to steal second, take third on a flyout, then score on a wild pitch to widen the early lead to 5-0 after two innings.

Davis blasted a grand slam to right center in the fourth to lengthen the lead to 9-0. The slam was the first of her career.

Georgia Southern (14-21) didn't go quietly in the fifth, loading the bases on three-straighr one-out walks. An RBI fielder's choice by Faith Barth pushed in a run to break up the shutout, 9-1. Howard held the Eagles to the lone run en route to the run rule.

The Bulldogs travel to Gainesville, Florida this weekend for a three-game series against No. 15 Florida. The top-15 SEC series begins Friday at 6:30 p.m., streaming live on SEC Network+.

Head Coach Tony Baldwin
Opening statement...
"The first thing that came to mind tonight was what a great crowd. We had a great night for softball and Dawg Nation was here. The stands were packed for a Wednesday game. You can't ask for anything more. You come to a place like this to have games like this. Thanks to all the fans that came out. I thought we were really disciplined tonight. That's been something that we've been working on and something that I've challenged our team with. Clearly, their goal was to make it hard for us to score runs with how they were mixing and matching their pitching and how they pitched us. I thought we did a good job of taking the walks, taking the hit by pitches, and forcing them eventually to put the ball across the plate. When they did, we put some pretty good swings on it. We were competitive in the circle. I don't know if we were as sharp as we can be, but we were sharp enough. Then, we played clean on defense. All in all, a pretty good day and a good game leading into the weekend."

On his message to the team early in the game...
"At the end of the day, their pitcher created a matchup kind of thing. Yesterday, we used that practice to really prepare for what Florida does, which is very different from what that starting pitcher for Georgia Southern was doing. We just had to talk about what we have to do to be successful against this pitcher and make that adjustment because it was a little bit different than what we've been working on."