BATON ROUGE — The fourth-ranked LSU Tiger softball team returns to action on Tuesday night when it begins a three-game series with Southeastern Conference rival Mississippi State at Tiger Park.
The three-game set includes a doubleheader which begins at 6 p.m. on Tuesday and a single game, beginning at 2 p.m., on Wednesday. Wednesday’s game was moved ahead two hours due to expected weather problems later in the day.
“(Mississippi State) has had some phenomenal wins,” said LSU coach Yvette Girouard. “They beat (then-No. 1) Arizona 7-1 and that has got to make you take a hard look at a team. They have some other nice wins, so they are very capable of beating anybody on any given day.”
LSU (19-6, 4-1 SEC) enters the contest after splitting two games against Tennessee on Saturday. The Sunday game was rained out and will not be made up. The Tigers currently sit atop the conference standings, just ahead of Alabama and South Carolina who are each 4-2.
“(Saturday) is over with. We play a lot of ball games and if we live in the past we are going to die in the past,” Girouard said of bouncing back from the loss. “We have to move on and take care of business and what’s important now is Mississippi State coming in.”
Meanwhile, the Bulldogs come into Baton Rouge fresh off an upset of an upset of the 24th-ranked Gamecocks. However, South Carolina had taken the first two in that series.
Pitcher Britni Sneed, who is 9-4 this season, will lead LSU into the weekend after no-hitting the Lady Vols in her lone start last weekend. She has thrown a shutout in each of her last six starts while striking out 10 or more batters in the last five.
At the plate, leadoff hitter Trena Peel came alive last weekend, going 3-for-6 with a homerun. She is the team’s top batter at .385 this season and she has an on-base percentage of .473 while slugging better than .600.
Mississippi State counters with Jennifer Nelson, whose .418 batting average is among the best in the SEC, and Kelly Wilkerson, who is just a shade behind at .386. In all, the Bulldogs have five hitters over .300 this year.
However, as a team, they are hitting just .250 compared to LSU’s .278.
“They have one of the SEC’s premier players in Kelly Wilkerson who can single handedly carry that team. She is so dangerous and we have a lot of respect for them,” Girouard noted. “We absolutely are going to have to play Tiger softball to come out on top.”
In the circle, Kasey Whitehead paces the team with 10 wins.