BATON ROUGE — The No. 18 LSU softball opens a stretch of eight of its next nine games at home with a Wednesday doubleheader against Southeastern Louisiana at the new Tiger Park. The two teams were scheduled to meet in Hammond on February 18 before getting rained out.
LSU (25-10-1, 10-6-1 SEC) has won 11 of the 12 all-time meetings with the Lions, including a pair of shutouts victories last season. The Tigers are coming off an explosive offensive weekend with double-digit hits in all three games in addition to a .361 team batting average at Arkansas last weekend.
“Hopefully, we can continue to swing the bats well,” head coach Yvette Girouard said. “We stepped up in primetime hitting situations. It’s a chance for us to continue the hot streak and to feel good about ourselves heading into the weekend.”
Kirsten Shortridge and Jazz Jackson head into Wednesday’s games on nine and 10 game hitting streaks, respectively.
Rachel Mitchell paces the Tigers with 26 RBIs, while freshmen Ashley Langoni (21 RBIs), Juliana Santos (20 RBIs) and Anissa Young (21 RBIs) are right behind Mitchell accounting for 42.5 percent (62-of-146) of LSU’s RBIs. The trio also has belted 14 of LSU’s 20 home runs this season.
“Juliana had an excellent week, and we need her to continue to produce as the hitter in the No. 3 hole,” Girouard said. “She’ll be in some big RBI opportunities. Anissa also seems to be seeing the ball much better now. We’re a freshman-laden and we need them to continue to execute.”
Ashley Applegate and Jessica Mouse continue to add to their breakout sophomore seasons on offense. Applegate is second on the team with a .316 batting average and has drove home 12 RBIs, already surpassing her RBI total from last season. Mouse has found a home at the bottom of the lineup and reached base in eight of her 12 plate appearances at Arkansas over the weekend.
LSU is scheduled to throw Casey Faile, Brittany Mack and Shortridge at different points during Wednesday’s doubleheader.
Faile has strung together 22.2 consecutive innings over her last nine appearances without surrendering an earned run. She mowed down seven batters in 4.1 innings of three-hit relief in the middle game of the Arkansas series.
First pitch against the Lions is on-tap for 4 p.m. and both games will be broadcasted live on The X 104.5 and 104.9 FM in the Baton Rouge area with Patrick Wright calling all of the action. Live video and live stats also will be available on LSUSports.net.
Wednesday is the final Weekday Workers night where fans can receive a discounted admission price of $3 by providing a business card at the ticket office. The first 300 fans will receive special sunglasses and there are multiple chances to win prizes, including a $50 Travelers Cheques courtesy of Capital One Bank.
Head Coach Yvette Girouard
Walk-On’s Luncheon ? April 14, 2009
Opening Statement
“We had an exciting week last week. It was standing room only at Nicholls and then we dodged tornadoes in Arkansas going and coming back. I felt like we gave away the first game of the series. We had the lead late and relinquished it in 40-degree weather. It was tough playing conditions, but we came back to win the next two games. We’re percentage points behind Alabama for the lead of the SEC Western Division. Florida is running away with the overall title. They’re the consensus number one in the nation. I have a chance to vote every week [for the Top 25] and they’ve been my number one the entire season. Stacey Nelson is their pitcher. Two years ago when we beat Florida at Auburn for the SEC Tournament Championship, I remember walking through the lines telling their coach Tim Walton that if she [Nelson] continues to grow he has a real chance of getting to the College World Series. He proved us all right last year. Florida is a senior-laden team that is strong throughout. They can hit, hit for power and have tremendous pitching. It’s quite a challenge to have them coming in this weekend. In the meantime, we have Southeastern Louisiana tomorrow night. We went down to Hammond and got rained out earlier this season. Their coach told me then he wouldn’t be opposed to coming to Tiger Park for a doubleheader to make-up that rain out. It’s a huge weekend on-campus, and we hope that people will punch their [Super Tiger Weekend] ticket at softball so they can get their free t-shirt. Hopefully, the weather will hold out for us. It’s always good to be home.
“We’re still tinkering with the [batting] lineup with all of the rain outs and injuries that we’ve had. We’re extremely proud of Juliana Santos for earning SEC Freshman of the Week. She battles Crohn’s Disease so we have to be careful with her. We continue to have to tinker with our lineup and you might see a huge tinkering tomorrow night against Southeastern. I’m open for questions.
On What Juliana Santos Brings to the Team
“I love that kid. She is a hard-nose ballplayer that anytime you coach her it’s ?Yes ma’am, I’ll try and get it better’. She goes all out. I think she was a huge factor in the Tennessee weekend where she didn’t play well offensively or defensively. She’s a huge key for us. We have her in RBI situations, and we count on her leadership in the infield. She’s just a battler. She had this disease for some time and it doesn’t stop her. She’s one of those kids that coaches love to coach. I’m so happy for her that she bounced back from one weekend. She got banged up pretty good in that Tennessee series, and we had to sit her out at Nicholls. We had to bring in her in during the last inning, and she gets the tying RBI. She’s huge for our lineup and she’s going to have a great career as a Tiger.”
On the Possibility of Making-Up Games
“We can’t make them up. There’s a discussion going on with Mississippi Valley State, but they need to win their conference tournament to get into the NCAA Tournament to be able to continue to play. There’s one date [before the Auburn series] where we could make it up. It will be seven games lost if we’re able to make up Southeastern tomorrow night.”
On Being Intimidated by Playing No. 1 Florida This Weekend
“I don’t think this team is intimidated at all by Florida. They won’t be, and they haven’t been intimidated all season long. They don’t say die, and they’re not afraid to play anybody. Intimidation isn’t the problem. It’s getting stability and putting all of the pieces of the puzzle together. Sometimes, we don’t pitch as well as I’d like us to pitch. We just played horrible against Tennessee the entire weekend. It was just uncharacteristic of our team and yet we were still in all of the games.”
On Being Surprised How Well the Young Team has Played to this Point
“I’m very happy with how we’re playing. We had some question marks entering the season. We lose Dani Hofer for the season, and you have a player like Cody Trahan coming off a back surgery. When we pitched her Friday [at Arkansas] because it was 40 degrees, our trainer told me that she thought that Cody wouldn’t be able to pitch on Saturday. I wanted her to get out there and see. She pitched magnificently for six innings and ran out of gas a little bit in the seventh. We have to deal with that issue and not knowing what we’re going to get. I can’t even work with her in the bull pen because we have to be real careful with her during the week. We’ve to deal with these question marks, and I’m very happy with the way that we’ve played. Looking back, we have legitimacy lost one game. We’ve been out of one game against Oklahoma game, but at the same time we could have lost 10 more because we’ve come back during the last couple of innings. It’s been a fun team to coach. They have tremendous attitude, want to win, aren’t intimidated by anyone and are self-motivated.”
On the Pitching Plans for This Week
“Because of our situation, you’re going to see us use all four pitchers and continue to piece meal it together. Kirsten Shortridge also came in with an arm injury. Brittany Mack started off phenomenal for us has started to run into a little bit of a control problem. We’re working very diligently [to fix it]. I wanted to redshirt her from the beginning, but we didn’t have an option to do that after what happened to Dani and Cody. Casey Faile along with Brittany and Kirsten will throw tomorrow night. We’ll rest Cody for the weekend.”
On the National Champion Coming from the SEC This Season
“I really thought that Tennessee was going to do it [win a national championship] a couple of years ago. They were basically a hit away from doing it. It would be fabulous for the SEC. I would like the Tigers to be the first one to do it, but Florida has a legitimate chance. They got there [to the College World Series] last year and didn’t do so well. They have what it takes. I don’t know if they blinked a little bit being on the big stage. They’re more seasoned this season.”
On Differences Between Stacey Nelson and Stephanie Brombacher
“They’re both unbelievable. Stephanie took a recruiting visit here and it’s pretty incredible that she hasn’t been beaten. Both throw very hard and hit their spots very well. They don’t make a lot of mistakes over the plate. Stacey keeps the ball more away from you with her screw ball, while Stephanie goes down more.”