Neither Brownstown Central softball coach Darren Bryant nor Trinity Lutheran coach Bob Tabeling said they expected a 1-0 game when they showed up at the Cougars’ field Saturday morning.

Brownstown’s Adelynn Anderson led off the top of the third inning with a double to left-center. She advanced to third base on a wild pitch and scored when Kelsey Schneider hit a ground ball to the Trinity second baseman, who held the ball.

Tabeling said, “I didn’t expect it would be 1-0. I really expected a low-scoring game. It wasn’t going to surprise me if it was 3-2 or 2-1 or something like that.”

It was a game of pitching and defense.

“It was outstanding pitching,” Tabeling said. “You look at the two teams and one pitcher gives up three hits, Grace (Lance) gives up three hits and their pitcher gives up four hits.”

Rylee May, a junior left-hander, allowed the Cougars four singles to go along with three strikeouts and didn’t walk any.

Lance, a sophomore lefty for the Cougars, gave up two singles and a double, had 13 strikeouts and walked two.

“I didn’t expect a 1-0 game,” Bryant said. “(Lance) pitched a very good game against us. We’ve seen some really strong pitching lately against big schools and in our conference. I didn’t think that would intimidate us at all and that we would hit well. We struck out more in this game than we have in the last six or seven games. She did a good job, kept the ball down and left us off-balance.

“Rylee pitched really well,” Bryant said. “We had been struggling a little bit with too many walks from our pitchers, and she didn’t walk any, didn’t hit any batters, so that was a big plus. We played good defense and didn’t make any errors.”

Bryant said his team wasn’t as sharp as he would have liked.

“We needed to make one run stand up,” he said. “I think a few of the girls were still asleep when we got off the bus as far as their energy and being ready to go, and that showed a little bit. That wasn’t the case with the whole team.”

There was only one error in the game when the Trinity first baseman dropped a throw.

The Braves’ hits were Anderson’s double in the third, Olivia Justice’s single in the fourth and Brooke Meahl’s single in the seventh.

For the Cougars, Dianna Munoz singled in the second, Bailey Tabeling singled in the third and Madison Keith singled in the fourth and seventh.

“We just couldn’t string enough hits together to score the run like they did,” coach Tabeling said. “We hit the ball at Borden and scored 11 runs, and today, we couldn’t hit the ball. We played terrible defense (at Borden on Friday). Today, we played great defense and we couldn’t hit.”

The Braves (14-9) will host Paoli today, and the Cougars (12-9) will host Milan today for Senior Night.