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FARMVILLE, Va. – Big South Freshman of the Year Amber Bishop delivered a pair of RBI, and reliever Chase Cassady played hero out of the bullpen to lead No. 1 seed Liberty to a 9-3 win over No. 3 seed Longwood and force a winner-take-all championship showdown Sunday at 1 p.m. at Lancer Field.
 
In a rematch of Saturday's semifinal, Liberty (38-21) bounced back to avenge a 7-4 loss to Longwood earlier in the day. That bounceback performance came in large part thanks to a 2-for-3 night from Bishop, who singled and scored the tying run in a four-run fourth inning and then drove in a pair with a two-run single during another four-run Liberty outburst in the sixth. 

The loss is the first of the tournament for two-time reigning Big South Champion Longwood, which earned a spot in the championship game with wins over No. 5 seed Winthrop, No. 2 seed Campbell and Liberty in the first three rounds. 

Meanwhile the Big South regular season champion Flames took the long road back to the title game, defeating Longwood in their third game of the day. Key to that surge was Bishop, who is hitting .538 with three homers and seven RBI in Liberty's four tournament games, and a shutdown relief performance from Cassady (5-7), who held the hot-hitting Lancers (27-27) to just one run over 5.0 innings. Cassady took over for starter Stephanie Marlowe after a Justina Augustine home run in the top of the third and allowed Longwood just three hits the rest of the way.

"To their credit, Liberty put the pressure on us," said Longwood head coach Kathy Riley. "I didn't think we played poorly. We put together some really good at-bats, but defensively we let ourselves down."

The pair of Cassady and Marlowe combined to give up four hits on a night in which the Flames defense backed their pitchers, who had just one strikeout throughout.
 
Longwood All-Big South second-team pitcher Sydney Gay (14-14) took the loss, surrendering eight runs – seven earned – over 6.0 innings after she opened the game by retiring nine straight hitters. Gay finished the night with 96 pitches, 63 for strikes.

"I thought Sydney looked good," Riley said. "She only gave up three hits through the sixth inning, so it wasn't like they were hitting the ball hard off her."

Longwood took the lead in the second inning with a Kasey Carr sacrifice fly and added to that lead an inning later with Augustine's third home run of the season.

Liberty responded the next half inning with a four-spot on the scoreboard, recording four hits in the process. After Bishop scored on a throwing error to tie the game at 2-all, Jaclyn Amader laid down a suicide squeeze and Tori Zavodney slid underneath the tag at the plate to give Liberty its first lead of the night.

The Flames add four more runs in the sixth inning on three hits, including a two-run single from Bishop and an RBI single from Alexia Taylor.

The loss was Longwood's first of the tournament and sets the stage for an all-or-nothing showdown between the Commonwealth rivals Tuesday at 1 p.m. The game will be the sixth this season between the teams, with Longwood holding a slight 3-2 advantage in 2017.
 
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