Las Vegas, NV – The Thunderbirds continued competition on Saturday in Las Vegas. The T-Birds went 0-2 in their third day of competition at the DeMarini Desert Classic hosted by UNLV.

The Thunderbirds faced the Aggies of Utah State in their morning game, and the Rainbow Warriors of Hawaii in their afternoon matchup.

Utah State 10, SUU 3

The Thunderbirds and the Aggies went scoreless until the bottom of the third when SUU's Morgan Leonard hit a three run homer scoring Amanda Cook and Payton Hart and starting things right for the T-Birds, putting them up 3-0.

The Aggies quickly answered in the top of the fourth with a three run homer tying the score up at 3-3.

The Aggie bats came back alive in the top of the sixth scoring four runs on several Southern Utah errors.

The T-Birds fought at the plate, but could not put any more runs up on the board. The contest ended in a 10-3 victory for the Aggies.

“Today we were not as aggressive at the plate and it showed in our offensive production,” SUU head coach Tom Gray said. “If we are going to be a good offensive team we will need to be more consistent. On the positive side, our pitchers did well. They certainly had us in a position to win had we played better in other aspects of the game.”

Hawaii 5, SUU 1

The Rainbow Warriors put the first run up on the board, but the T-Birds answered shortly after tying the game up at 1-1.

The warriors rallied in the fifth and the seventh scoring 4 runs making the score 5-1.

Southern Utah had four hits scoring only one run.

SUU's Kirsten Hostetler pitched five innings for the T-Bird's allowing only 7 hits and three runs. Hostetler faced 23 batters. Haley Wall came in for the Thunderbirds and pitched two innings, allowing two runs.

Coach Gray explained what needs to happen on Sunday in order for the Thunderbirds to be successful.

“The key to tomorrow will be to get back to the aggressive approaches we had both offensively and defensively on Thursday and Friday,” he said.