The Lady Colonel softball team was held to eight hits in suffering a doubleheader sweep at the hands of the University of Southern Mississippi Wednesday night in Hattiesburg, Miss. Nicholls is now 20-29 overall on the season.

Game 1: USM 5 Nicholls 0

To open the doubleheader, Southern Miss got a pair of runs in the bottom of the third inning and single runs in fourth, fifth and sixth inning to take the win.

USM got homeruns from Amanda Brown and Sarah Boyd, while Nicholls was led by Kyna Boyer, who had two of the five Lady Colonel hits.

Nicole Stewart, Jill Chabert and Amy Pitre all recorded one hit each for Nicholls.

Felicia Gonzales got the win for the Golden Eagles, after pitching the entire way and striking out 10, while walking one.

Duffi Matherne, who also pitched the entire way, was saddled with the loss for Nicholls as she fell to 14-20 on the year.

Game 2: USM 8 Nicholls 0

The Lady Colonels were again blanked as Melissa Cundiff held Nicholls to three hits in a game, called after the sixth inning due to the eight run mercy rule.

Southern Mississippi scored six runs in the bottom of the first, off of Nicholls hurler Christina Hanson. Fallon Cancienne then came in to pitch for Nicholls and held USM to single runs in the fifth and sixth innings.

Nicholls was outhit 7-3 in the game and was hampered by a pair of errors.

Boyer, Shauna Emola and Kristi Blanchard connected on hits for the Lady Colonels, while Heather Bell homered for USM.

Cundiff got the win for the Golden Eagles, while Hanson was tagged with the loss and fell to 2-2 on the year.

Over the weekend, Nicholls took two-of-three Southland Conference games from Stephen F. Austin in Nacogdoches, Texas.

Nicholls posted a 4-2 win in game one, fell 2-1 in game two and picked up a 3-0 victory in the series finale.

With the series win, Nicholls is now 4-17 in SLC play.

Prior to that SLC series, Nicholls was swept by conference foe Northwestern State in three games played in Natchitoches.

The Lady Colonels fell 2-1, 4-1 and 2-1.

Nicholls will return to action for its final home series, when they face Texas-San Antonio this weekend.

The teams will play a doubleheader, starting at 5 p.m. on Saturday, before closing the series out Sunday at noon.

Sunday’s game will mark the final home contest for Lady Colonel senior Nicole Stewart.