EUNICE, La. – Jones scored all five of its runs with two outs, highlighted by a four-run third, as the Bobcats shutout Northwest Mississippi, 5-0, in the first round of the NJCAA Region 23 Tournament Thursday afternoon at LSUE's Lady Bengal Field.

Jones ran its season-long winning streak to 18 games with their NJCAA-best 17th shutout of the season. The Bobcats improved to 40-7, while the Rangers fell to 19-16.

The Bobcats eclipsed 40 wins for the ninth consecutive (full) season under Chris Robinson and company, unmatched in Mississippi.

Meagan Wynne's two-out, RBI-double to left-center broke open a scoreless game in the third and Maycee Knight and Tia'Rain Saunders followed with RBI-doubles to make it 4-0 Jones. 

Lauren Lindsey's two-out, RBI-single to right in the fourth extended the Bobcat lead to 5-0.

That was more than enough offense for Nia Luckett and Sterling James in the circle. Luckett scattered three hits, no runs and six strikeouts in 5.1 innings and James tossed the final 1.2 frames and struck out three. 

Lindsey, Saunders and Knight combined for six of the Bobcats' eight hits.

Jones will face No. 5 Itawamba on Friday at 3 p.m., streaming live on LSUE's YouTube channel. Northwest gets LSU Eunice at noon in an elimination game.