By Kent Lowe
Special to LSUsports.net
News and notes from the LSU softball team at their first Women’s College World Series this week in Oklahoma City, Okla.
ALL-AMERICAN: Congratulations to Britni Sneed on making first-team All-American pitcher. It’s well deserved and if she’s stays healthy, there is no telling what she could rack up next year. But for shortstop Stephanie Hastings not to make it somewhere on the A-A list, is a travesty. If Hastings stays at second base where she dominated and made A-A a year ago, she makes it again easily. But without her at shortstop this year, the Tigers are probably not still playing this deep in May either.
Shortstop is a position, however, filled with great players. But for her not to get any consideration in the at-large category when you look at some of the players who made it, shows a lack of respect for this LSU program.
APRIL JANZEN: The junior second baseman played one of her best games against Stanford with three hits in her first three at bats. She was hitting the ball hard and placing it in all the right places. But her heads up advancement from second to home on a deep fly ball by Christy Connor which was caught at the fence. If the ball goes, the game momentum would have been LSU’s and the Tigers probably would have been on the way to victory, but if Janzen and Yvette Girouard aren’t thinking on the same page, Janzen doesn’t score and the Tigers probably don’t either.
One other thing, having mentioned Christy Connor. It’s hard to fault her on that second error she was charged with in extra innings. My angle of the replay really looked like the runner was going to be safe anyway and I’m surprised the scorer didn’t give the Stanford batter a hit on the play. In the long run, it’s an unearned run to help Sneed’s ERA, but a tough error to give the batter after the ball deflected off Sneed’s glove to start with.
DIFFERENT SURFACE, DIFFERENT CREW: I don’t know what the composition of the Porter Hall of Fame Stadium infield is and I don’t think the ground crew chief is as famous as Jesse Cuevas at Omaha’s Rosenblatt Stadium, but this infield plays much different than any I’ve seen in the SEC.
The ball seems to roll much slower to the infielders (note Janzen legging out an infield hit) and when Stanford tried a suicide squeeze late in the game, did you notice that the ball just fell into the dirt and stopped two feet in front of the plate. Jen Schuelke just reached out with one hand, grabbed the ball and tagged the runner coming from third. If the ball rolls forward like on most SEC fields, that Stanford run scores easily from third.
Again, I don’t think it affected any LSU infielders, other than the Connor play mentioned above. Once the ball deflected off Sneed, Hastings had to hustle to it just to get a close play at first. Again, I think the hit call there would have probably been just as correct, but as a former official scorer at LSU baseball, I know what it is to get second guessed.
YVETTE GIROUARD: I hope LSU’s coach didn’t lose too much sleep beating herself up over sending Julie Wiese to the plate on the bloop single that resulted in an easy tag out at the plate. Girouard was all class at the press conference in accepting the blame for not moving further up the line to see where the ball was and to get a chance to stop Wiese if necessary. But it’s over and done with. I can think of all the great decisions she made this year in games I watched that got us to this point, so there is no need for anyone to worry about that one play. Especially her.
THOUGHTS ON THE GAME: I really thought LSU was ready to play the game, but it’s hard to judge until they step out in front of that crowd. It wasn’t as full as it was for the afternoon session, but that crowd of 3,192 was into the game. LSU didn’t appear as sharp as I’ve seen this team, but the Tigers did have some tremendous defensive plays that kept the game from being a 3 or 4-0 type finish. As long as you are staying in the game, you have a chance to win and that’s what LSU did. It was just on this night, Stanford kept pounding away and finally found the right answer on how to break through.
Funny, that when Britni Sneed and Stanford pitcher Sorensen met in February, they combined for 25 strikeouts. Strikeouts for both this time were hard to come by. I think you can chalk that up to the WCWS as well. Sneed didn’t appear to be as fluid as other appearances and both pitchers had to know that much was expected of them from those watching the newly named All-Americans.
But this is a day off and a chance to regroup. LSU meets Iowa, a 2-0 loser to UCLA on Saturday at 1:30 p.m. All games are must win or turn in equipment games from here on out, but LSU can take that game and get to an 8:30 p.m. game Saturday against the loser of the Arizona-Oklahoma contest. That will be more difficult, but this team still wants to make a little run here. This team was not shattered by the loss Thursday. They are now just more determined to get a win.
FINALLY: All the talk has been about how first-year teams come to the WCWS or the CWS and worry about t-shirts for friends, tickets for relatives, etc. If you want t-shirts, you’d better send money. These things aren’t cheap. Bring money in increments of $20 if you want to talk about anything in the t-shirt line at this business….Nice touch Thursday for people like Assistant AD Mark Ewing, women’s basketball coach Sue Gunter, gymnastics coach D-D Breaux and volleyball coaches Fran Flory and Tonya Johnson to fly up for the contest. …There was a large group of LSU fans on hand and they were loud. Those not in the grandstand, wrapped themselves in blankets from the evening chill and sat next to the stands on the hill….LSU fans purchased some 240 tickets from the Oklahoma group which runs the event and that doesn’t include the 84 tickets for player comps, etc.