BATON ROUGE – The No. 20 LSU softball team returns home for a Wednesday tilt against McNeese State. First pitch versus the Cowgirls is on-tap for 6 p.m. at Tiger Park.
The Tigers (9-3) are looking to bounce back after dropping three of five games at the Houston Hilton Plaza Classic over the weekend.
“We’re looking forward to getting back on the field in front of our home crowd and having an opportunity to correct some little things,” head coach Yvette Girouard said. “One of those things is being able to make adjustments at the plate. We lost our heads for a moment and tried to do too much at the plate instead of something very simple.”
Anissa Young fuels the LSU offense with a .387 batting average. She ranks among the SEC’s Top 15 in home runs [3], RBIs [13], runs scored [13] and total bases [24].
“Anissa is just so much more confident at the plate and is making a lot of solid contact on her swings,” Girouard said. “She struck out a lot last year, but that’s not the case this year. She’s hitting the ball very hard and putting positive swings for the majority of her at-bats.”
Ashley Langoni, Tiffany Shaw, Cassie Trosclair and Tammy Wray join Young with a hitting clip of .333 or better. Langoni and Wray have chipped in seven RBIs apiece, while Shaw and Trosclair have used the short game to compile 10 hits each.
In the circle, Meghan Patterson has strung together four consecutive victories to open her LSU career. The two-time reigning LSWA Pitcher of the Week is third in the SEC with 42 strikeouts and has held opponents to a paltry .118 batting average.
Despite a 3-3 mark that includes a pair of hard-luck extra inning setbacks, Rachele Fico enters Wednesday’s contest as the SEC’s strikeout queen with 46 Ks. The Oxford, Conn., product has tossed a complete game in all five of her starts.
Live stats for Wednesday’s game will be available on LSUsports.net and fans can follow in-game updates via the program’s social media pages at www.Facebook.com/lsusoftball and Twitter.com/LSU_Softball.
The Tiger Park Ticket Booth will open Wednesday at 5 p.m. and fans can purchase tickets on-site starting at $5 for adult general admission. It also marks the second of five Weekday Worker games where fans presenting their business card will receive a $3 ticket and entrance into a drawing to win a prize pack.
Additional ticket information for LSU’s home series with SEC heavyweights Alabama, Florida, Kentucky and Tennessee is available at www.LSUtix.net