AMHERST, Mass. --- The Amherst College softball team dropped a Saturday doubleheader to conference rival Tufts, losing the opener 4-0 before dropping the second game at the Amherst Softball Field 12-0 in a five-inning, mercy-rule shortened contest.

Amherst fell to 4-11 on the season, 1-3 in NESCAC play. The Mammoths get right back to it Sunday with a twinbill at Trinity College in Hartford beginning at 12 p.m. Tufts improved to 16-4 overall, 4-1 in conference play. 

Game 1, Tufts 4, Amherst 0

* Tufts'' Keriann Slayton homered to left leading off the second innings to give the Jumboa 1 -0 lead. Amherst, which would muster only three hits off Jumbo starter Sky Johnson, would pick up two of those three safeties in the bottom of the second.  Emma Nordstrom led off the frame with a single up the middle that eluded two Jumbo fielders. After an out, Sadie Pool singled to put runners on first and second. Johnson fanned the next two hitters to end the threat and would not allow another base runner in the game, retiring the final 17 batters she faced. 

* First-year Annalise Knop was great over the first five frames, limiting Tufts to that single run. The Jumbos got to her in the sixth, scoring three times to pull away. Slayton had an RBI-double to make it 2-0, another run scored on a wild pitch and the final came on an RBI-single from Michelle Adelmen. 

* Knop took the loss, giving up nine hits over six innings and four runs, all earned, She walked two and struck out two. 

* Pool was 2 for 2 in the loss. 

Game 2, Tufts 12, Amherst 0 (5  INN.)

* Tufts scored two runs in the top of the first inning against Amherst starter Dani Torres Werra as Kaitlyn Perucci had a two-run single. The Jumbos broke it open with five runs in the third and enacted the eight-run mercy rule in the top of the fifth with two more. Perucci had a two-run homer in that fifth-inning outburst. 

* Pool had the Mammoths only hit of the nightcap, a bloop single over shortstop with two outs in the bottom of the fourth. Sophia DiCocco went the full five for Tufts, allowing the one hit while walking two and striking out three.