Warren Central started Tuesday with two chances to earn the program’s 400th win.

After a late rally and an impressive hitting display by Brandon, the Lady Vikes are still stuck on 399.

Brandon’s Alicia Berry delivered a one-out, RBI single in the top of the seventh to give her team a 6-5 victory in game one of the doubleheader, and the Lady Bulldogs (16-5) cranked out 14 hits in five innings of a 14-0 shellacking in game two.

“I was proud of the way we stayed with them in the first game, and if we had been able to hit with those runners in place then the outcome of that game

would have been different,” said WC coach Lucy Young, whose team stranded six runners, including four in the last three innings of game one. “That second game, they just came out pounding the ball. We made a few mistakes, but a lot of that was just plain hits and doing what you’re supposed to do in slow-pitch softball.”

Mandy Fuller was 3-for-4 in game one and Mandy Bordelon drove in two runs for the Lady Vikes (16-8), who will get their next shot at the milestone victory Thursday at Northwest Rankin.

“We’re just hoping to get it. That’s just a milestone that this group will be the ones who get to accomplish that,” Young said. “It’s no big deal on that. I’d much rather us, even if we’d lost the second game by one run, to play a much better game … That just wasn’t fun at all.”

The first game Tuesday was a nip-and-tuck affair the whole way.

Back-to-back doubles by Shawn Johnson and Fuller helped stake the Lady Vikes to a 2-0 lead in the bottom of the first, but Brandon rallied for four runs in the third to take the lead.

Warren Central scored twice in the bottom of the third to tie it, then took a 5-4 lead on a sacrifice fly by Tiffany Fuller in the fifth. Brandon tied the game again on an RBI single by Kimbo Alford in the sixth, then won it with another rally in the seventh.

Three singles loaded the bases with one out, and Berry delivered her clutch base hit to put Brandon ahead 6-5.

The Lady Vikes went down in order in the bottom of the seventh to end game one, and never got rolling in game two.

Two WC errors and a two-run triple by Melissa May keyed a four-run first inning for Brandon, and the Lady Bulldogs never looked back. May went 3-for-4 with two triples and four RBIs, and the first six batters in Brandon’s order were a combined 12-for-21 and scored 12 of the Lady Bulldogs’ 14 runs.

Warren Central, meanwhile, managed only three hits for the game and didn’t get a runner past second base.

“It looked like we were a little sluggish in the first game, and we wanted to see if we could get something going early. And we did,” Brandon coach Richard Joyner said. “Warren Central is always a good, strong opponent and we always have trouble with them, just like we did in that first game. It just seemed like everything started snowballing on them.”