Cajuns, Aggies Edge LSU; Meet in Softball Final
BATON ROUGE – Rachele Fico racked up a career-best 11 strikeouts but the No. 17 LSU softball team dropped a 1-0 elimination contest to Texas A&M Saturday in-front of 1,446 fans at the NCAA Baton Rouge Regional.
Rachel Mitchell, Kirsten Shortridge and Cody Trahan had their LSU (45-16) careers come to a close, while Texas A&M (43-16) advances to face Louisiana-Lafayette (44-16) in Sunday’s regional final at 1 p.m.
It marked only the second time in 12 NCAA Regional appearances that LSU failed to make the final day of the event.
The Aggies notched the game’s only run in the fourth inning as Meagan May knocked a solo home run over the centerfield fence on a 2-0 offering.
“I want to apologize to the Tiger faithful who have supported us all year. It was an offensive cesspool this weekend,” head coach Yvette Girouard said. “We didn’t score a run on the day. I thought [Rachele] Fico was magnificent. She made one bad pitch to the best hitter on their team, who we said not to make a bad pitch to.”
The LSU offense mustered only a trio of singles off Melissa Dumezich, who moved to 19-3 with the win. Dumezich also fired a three-hit shutout to propel the Aggies to a 2-0 win over McNeese State earlier in the day. Rhiannon Kliesing fueled the offense with a 2-for-3 effort and two runs scored.
“I do want to give the young lady from Texas A&M [Dumezich] credit. She’s thrown every inning, and she still could do this to us,” Girouard said. “That’s a gutsy performance by her, but it was a frustrating season in that all of our losses if you go back and look from day one, it’s within a run. It’s within some outs and offensively, we have to do a better job as coaches because this was our nemesis all year.”
Fico surrendered only two hits en route to her second career double-figure strikeout effort. The Connecticut native posted 10 Ks against NCAA Regional participant Jacksonville State earlier this season.
The Tigers attempted a pair of two-out rallies in the sixth and seventh innings. Shortridge slapped an infield single to break up a stretch of 10 straight batters retired by Dumezich. She stole second base to match Dee Douglas’ single-season mark of 45, but Ashley Applegate grounded out to end the threat.
Ashley Langoni connected for a bloop single to keep LSU alive in the seventh, but Dumezich struck out Anissa Young after a six-pitch battle to secure the 1-0 win.
“I think we made it a pitchers’ game instead of a hitters’ game instead, which I think happened when we went back to 43 (feet from home plate to the pitching circle),” Shortridge said. “It’s just aggravating to see all the other scrappy teams getting base hits, and you wonder sometimes what are we doing wrong? Like I said, we made it a pitchers’ game. Granted, both of those pitchers threw great games today, but we seem to make every pitcher look like an All-American. That has to change.”
Sunday’s Regional final will have live video and live stats in the Geaux Zone on LSUsports.net with Kent Lowe anchoring the coverage.
Texas A&M vs. McNeese State
May 22, 2010
MCNEESE STATE HEAD COACH NATALIE POOLE
Opening statement…
“Thank you very much for the opportunity to speak to you guys. It’s definitely a disappointing loss. We came out today ready to play and anticipating a great game, and I felt like it was a good game. I just feel like we couldn’t put our hits together. I felt like if we put the ball on the ground, I felt like we would make them make some mistakes, and I felt like we hit a lot of balls in the air. We just struggled to get some offense going. We definitely had a good offense going into this tournament, and it just wasn’t quite what I expected for the weekend. I thought Kayla (Shepherd) pitched a great game. I feel like we could have played a little bit sharper on defense minus the two mistakes. Luckily it didn’t get away from us. I felt like we could have eliminated the mistakes, but the main thing to me was the offense. I felt like if we put out a better offense, we would have made this game a whole lot better, closer, more intense and given us an opportunity to win.”
On what she tells the players when they are struggling to score runs…
“I just tell them to keep their heads up because if they are defeated mentally because they are struggling, then we’re not going to be successful, so the key to every at-bat is to keep their minds open and to keep wanting to make quality adjustments and try to make a change. The ball in the air wasn’t successful, so we just kept working on trying to put the ball down and making adjustments from at-bat to at-bat.”
On making the NCAA Regional…
“Whenever I came in, our vision was to be able to get here. That was the first step. We had not been here in a few years and didn’t really know how to get to the top and have a successful season. Clearly, we’ve done that. Last year, we just missed the mark because our offense just struggled a bit, and I felt like we had the pitching to do it. This year we had the pitching to do it, and I felt like our offense was better. We just definitely didn’t hit the way we had been hitting, so of course I’m a bit disappointed we didn’t rise to the occasion when it came to the offense, and yes, people might say we are playing some better pitching, and we are facing some better pitching, but if we want to move beyond this point, we have to adjust to the better pitching. They’re good for a reason. This was a great experience for us. I’m definitely not satisfied as a coach. This is where I want to be, and I want to get to the next level. I’m going to talk to our kids, and we will be building exactly where we left off.”
MCNEESE STATE PLAYER QUOTES
PITCHER KAYLA SHEPHERD
On giving up the first run…
“I got hit in the foot. I try not to let it affect me as much as possible, but things go that way for a reason. All I could do was let my defense work behind me, and hopefully, our offense was going to come around and give them a chance to score a run for us.”
On making it to the NCAA Regional…
“It’s my first time as well. These are three teams that people have watched during years past come to this and get further and go to the World Series, and we see how good of teams they are, so we were lucky to have the opportunity to do it and be in the regional with them and to play. It’s an experience that many teams don’t get.”
LEFT FIELDER CLAIRE TERRACINA
On making it to the NCAA Regional…
“It was my first time, so it was a great experience, great competition. Everybody is good here, so we weren’t expecting it to be easy. We just try to have fun doing it, and I think we all tried our best.”
CENTER FIELDER LIZ MORVANT
On making it to the NCAA Regional…
“It’s a great experience for me as well. It’s also my first time here. We had a great year this year, and it’s all we could hope for. I just hope we make it back next year.”
Game 3: UL-Lafayette def. LSU, 1-0
Cajuns upend LSU Softball 1-0 in Winner’s Bracket Game
BATON ROUGE – Louisiana-Lafayette pitcher Donna Bourgeois tossed a five-hit shutout as the No. 3 seeded Cajuns edged top-seeded LSU 1-0 Saturday during the winner’s bracket contest of the NCAA Baton Rouge Regional in-front of a season-best 1,964 fans at Tiger Park.
The Cajuns (44-16) advance to the regional final Sunday at 1 p.m., while LSU (45-15) faces the winner of the Texas A&M-McNeese contest at 6 p.m. in an elimination game.
Bourgeois (23-9) forced the Tigers to strand nine runners on-base, including four in scoring position. LSU put multiple runners on the base paths during the first and seventh innings.
“It was a great atmosphere for softball and to showcase Tiger Park. Congratulations to the Cajuns. I thought (Donna) Bourgeouis made some big pitches when she needed to,” head coach Yvette Girouard said. “It was a bad luck day for the Tigers. I thought Cody (Trahan) threw magnificently. The bottom line is that we had the right people in the right places, but we just didn’t execute offensively. That’s been a little bit of our nemeses all season. We are a very good pitching team with very good defense, but our bats have to wake up.”
Kirsten Shortridge and Juliana Santos tallied multi-hit efforts to combine for four of LSU’s hits. Mouse coaxed a one-out walk during the Tigers last at-bat. After Shortridge grounded back to Bourgeois to move pinch runner Tiffany Shaw to second base, Ashley Applegate was plunked to extend the frame.
On a 1-2 offering, Rachel Mitchell lifted a fly ball, but Cajun centerfielder Vallie Gaspard made the catch to secure the 1-0 win.
“It’s do or die. I definitely think we can get ourselves out of this hole,” Shortridge said. “We just beat ourselves. When we’ve lost this year, the trend has been that we beat ourselves. Our pitching was great, and our defense was great just like Coach (Girouard) said. Our bats have to come alive. We can’t win in postseason if we don’t hit the ball.”
Cody Trahan was the tough-luck loser for LSU and dropped to 13-5 on the season. The Cajuns manufactured the game’s lone run in the fourth inning aided by a pair of hit batters. Nerisssa Myers knocked a RBI-single just past LSU shortstop Courtney Hollier to plate Melissa Verde.
“That’s the tricky thing about softball. You never know when the batter is going to get on base or when the ball will go through the holes,” Trahan said. “The batter placed the ball nicely. It was a tough-luck hit, and there’s nothing we can do about that. We have to play better and stop letting things beat us.”
All games from the NCAA Baton Rouge Regional will have live video and live stats in the Geaux Zone on LSUsports.net with Kent Lowe anchoring the coverage. Fans also can listen to LSU’s games live on ESPN 104.5 and The X 104.9 FM in the Baton Rouge area with Patrick Wright set to call the action. In-game updates via http://twitter.com/lsu_softball.
NCAA Softball Regionals – Baton Rouge, La.
May 22, 2010
LSU vs. Louisiana-Lafayette
Head Coach Yvette Giraourd
Opening statement…
“It was a great atmosphere for softball and to showcase Tiger Park. Congratulations to the Cajuns, I thought [Donna] Bourgeouis made some big pitches when she needed to. It was a bad luck day for the Tigers. I thought Cody [Trahan] threw magnificently. The bottom line is that we had the right people in the right places, but we just didn’t execute offensively. That’s been a little bit of our nemeses all season. We are a very good pitching team with very good defense, but our bats have to wake up.”
On certain plays making the difference in the game…
“I didn’t think that going into the game. As it evolved, that’s what happened. We left nine people on-base with our best hitters up to bat in that situation. We should have made the play on the score, we didn’t. They got a break, it was a very hard luck loss. We have to hit the ball.”
On having to win three games to advance to the Super Regionals…
“Arizona State did it last year to us. I’m going to address my team and tell them the same thing.”
On problems with facing ULL’s Bourgeouis…
“She threw great. Her drop ball was looking nice. We didn’t capitalize on the pitches we needed to in different counts. We fished a little bit, she threw a great game.”
On looking forward…
“It’s do or die. I definitely think we can get ourselves out of this hole. We just beat ourselves. When we’ve lost this year, the trend has been that we beat ourselves. Our pitching was great, and our defense was great just like Coach [Girouard] said. Our bats have to come alive. We can’t win in postseason if we don’t hit the ball.”
On ULL’s sole run-scoring play…
“That’s the tricky thing about softball. You never know when the batter is going to get on-base or when the ball will go through the holes. The batter placed the ball nicely. It was a tough-luck hit, and there’s nothing we can do about that. We have to play better and stop letting things beat us.”
On illegal pitches…
“I’ve been called for a few illegal pitches this season for stepping forward off of the rubber. When your adrenaline is high and you are hyped up for a game like this, you don’t always pay attention to the details.
On possibly pitching in future games during the Regionals…
“This is postseason. It’s do or die. I’m not going to go out without fighting. If that means that Coach [Girouard] wants to give me the ball in every game, then I will pitch. No questions asked.”