Given a chance to catch their breath, the Cowgirls used it to blow past an old foe.

McNeese State rallied for a pair runs in the bottom of the sixth to knock off former Southland Conference rival Stephan F. Austin 4-3 Friday night in the opener of Cowgirl Classic II at Cowgirl Diamond.

“It was a tough game,” said McNeese head coach James Landreneau. “It’s what you want to see, your team coming through. We were resilient.”

Playing without their top power hitter, Jil Poullard, the Cowgirls (9-3) struggled to get the big hit despite collecting 11 of them. They left eight on base.

“We could not get the one big knock to break things open,” said Landreneau. “But you saw how our team responded when we need to.”

As for Poullard’s absence, all the Landreneau would say was, “She wasn’t with us tonight.”

When asked if Poullard would be back with the Cowgirls over the weekend Landreneau simply said, “We will see.”

The winning rally was started by Reese Reyna’s blast off the wall in left that ended in a leadoff triple.

“I wasn’t sure if it was gone, I was just running,” Reyna said. “I was just trying to get something going.”

Crislyne Moreno followed with a game-tying RBI single. Moreno came around to score the winner moments later after Corine Poncho was hit by a pitch by SFA reliever Corie Byrd, who plunked two of the three Cowgirls she faced.

But the drama didn’t end there. Hope Lusk led off the seventh for SFA (6-8) with a drive down the line in left that easily cleared the fence. However, it was just foul.

“It’s a long strike,” said McNeese reliever Lindsay Davis (2-0), who threw two innings of hitless ball to get the win.

“Just trying to throw strikes and keep them from scoring another run,” Davis said. “I knew my defense had my back.”

Reyna, Chloe Gomez and Erin Ardoin all had two hits for the Cowgirls while Alayis Seneca went 3-for-3.

The Cowgirls will play a pair of games starting at 2:30 p.m. today. First,

they will take on SFA once again before hosting Ole Miss (6-4) out of the Southeastern Conference.

The Rebels and SFA will open action at noon today.