AUBURN | Carlee Wallace walked into Jane B. Moore Field a broken woman Wednesday in some important ways.

Her chin? Held together by stitches. Her lip? Same thing. A bicuspid tooth is pointing the wrong direction and may need a root canal. Her neck hurts, too. It's all fallout from a nasty hit last weekend, which saw Auburn's catcher knocked out of game after a collision at second base.

She has reason to rest. Yet she refuses rest.

Wallace practiced with the team Wednesday and will start at catcher against Alabama Friday night in Tuscaloosa.

"I need to be there for my team," Wallace said. "There’s no amount of pain that would keep me away from that — other than physically not being able to (perform) with a broken bone or something like that. Overall, just with the injuries that I have, I owe it to my teammates to push though as much pain as I can take."

Wallace's slide into second base Sunday unfolded as expected until her face slammed into the hip of MSU's second baseman. The force of the hit jammed Wallace's facemask into the base of her chin and knocked her backward, which brought her leg under her awkwardly.

Wallace remained on her back for a few seconds before laboring to roll on to her side.

The delay was diagnostic in nature.

"I did a little check — my ankles are good, my knees are good, my back’s OK. I’m not paralyzed," Wallace said. "Then I rolled over and that’s when the blood starting coming out. Then I could feel my tongue going through my teeth. It scared the crap out of me."

It was a scene Wallace has seen before. As a freshman in 2015, Wallace was knocked out briefly during a collision at home plate during the NCAA Tournament and was stretchered off the field. She returned to the stadium after being examined at East Alabama Medical Center.

Wallace knew this latest collision wasn't as serious.

"If it wasn’t for all the blood and that we were in all whites — there wasn’t any way to hide it — I would have tried to play," she said. "I'm hurting and I'm sore, but it's nothing new. It really doesn’t matter how I feel. At the end of the day, I’m going in there regardless of how I feel. I’ll be ready."