PEORIA, Ill. – The Drake University softball team closes the 2021 regular season at Bradley Saturday and Sunday in a key three-game Missouri Valley Conference series. Saturday's doubleheader starts at noon and both games will be streamed on ESPN3. Sunday's finale is an 11 a.m. first pitch.
 
Drake (17-27, 11-12 MVC) and Bradley (17-20, 10-14 MVC) along with Evansville (23-19, 11-12 MVC) and Indiana State (18-25, 11-13 MVC) are battling for the fifth and sixth seeds for next week's MVC Tournament held May 12-15 at Cooper Stadium in Evansville, Ind. The fifth and sixth seeds avoid the first day of the tournament and will start play May 13 at 10 a.m. or 1 p.m., respectively. The Bulldogs swept Evansville in three games while the Sycamores took all three games over Drake.
 
The Bulldogs closed their home slate with a three-game sweep of Loyola. Drake, which has won nine out of its past 11 league games, got a pair of dominant pitching performances by Nicole Timmons and one by Mackenzie Hupke along with timely hitting against the Ramblers. Timmons took a no-hitter into the seventh inning in the series finale before Loyola broke it up with two-straight hits to open frame. However, Timmons retired the next three hitters and finished with a season-high 11 strikeouts. Hupke had a rough first inning in the second game but settled in and finished with 10 strikeouts, two off her career-high and season-best.
 
Freshman Skylar Rigby, who won her first MVC Newcomer of the Week earlier in week, drove in three runs in the first win. Emily Valtman was another key contributor all weekend as she drove in one run in the same game and in Sunday's finale drove in the Bulldogs' first two runs. Coming off the bench as a pinch hitter, Kristen Arias, brought in two runs in the fourth inning of game two and in the finale her pinch-hit sacrifice fly secured an insurance run.
 
Following this weekend, Drake is the defending back-to-back MVC Tournament champions after the cancellation of the 2020 MVC Softball season due to the COVID-19 pandemic.