BATON ROUGE – The No. 21 LSU softball team opened SEC action with a pair of 8-1 and 5-0 setbacks to No. 2 Florida Wednesday in-front of a season-best 1,267 fans at Tiger Park.
The Gators (21-0, 2-0 SEC) used a pair of solid pitching performances from Hannah Rogers and Stephanie Brombacher in the circle. The duo combined for 11 strikeouts against zero walks and limited LSU’s (15-7, 0-2 SEC) offense to four hits for the twinbill.
“It was a disappointing outing for us all the way around,” head coach Yvette Girouard said. “Obviously, there wasn’t enough good pitching and not any kind of hitting to speak of. This is a very talented Florida offense that came in and crushed balls when we made mistakes. Clearly, they did a much better job than we did tonight. We’re not making very good adjustments from at-bat to at-bat like Florida did tonight.”
In game one, Florida jumped out to a 2-0 lead with single runs during the third and fourth innings. Aja Paculba and Kelsey Horton provided the RBIs for the Gators.
The Tigers connected a trio of two-out singles from Alex Boulet, Simone Heyward and Tiffany Shaw to draw back to 2-1 in the fifth inning. On a 1-0 offering, Anissa Young grounded out to third base to leave the potential go-ahead runs in scoring position.
Florida connected for five home runs over the final two innings highlighted by three consecutive dingers from Kelsey Bruder, Brittany Schutte and Megan Bush in the seventh inning for the final margin of 8-1.
Rachele Fico surrendered six earned runs during 6.1 innings of work and fell to 5-5 on the season.
After three scoreless frames to open the second game, the Gators struck for a quartet of hits and a walk with two outs during the fourth inning to grab a 4-0 advantage. Kasey Fagan slaps a two-run single down the left field line followed by consecutive RBI doubles from Michelle Moultrie and Aja Paculba.
Florida tacked on a run in the fifth inning on an Ensley Gammell RBI squeeze bunt to make it 5-0.
Brittany Mack went the distance and dropped to 5-2 on the season, while Brombacher sat down the final 17 batters she faced to secure the 5-0 win for Florida.
LSU continues SEC action with a weekend series at No. 1 Georgia. Single games are on-tap for Friday [5:30 p.m.], Saturday [1:30 p.m.] and Sunday [12:30 p.m.].
All three games will be carried live on ESPN 104.5 FM with Patrick Wright and Matt Dunaway on the call. Fans can follow live stats on LSUsports.net along with in-game updates via the program’s social media pages at www.Facebook.com/lsusoftball and www.Twitter.com/LSU_Softball.
LSU vs. Florida
Postgame Quotes
March 9, 2011
Head Coach Yvette Girouard
On tonight’s games …
“It was a disappointing outing for us all the way around. Obviously, there wasn’t enough good pitching and not any kind of hitting to speak of. This is a very talented Florida offense that came in and crushed balls when we made mistakes. Clearly, they did a much better job than we did tonight. We’re not making very good adjustments from at-bat to at-bat like Florida did tonight.”
On opening SEC…
“This was a brutal opening to the SEC, it’s going to keep getting tougher and tougher. Georgia is a very good team as well. You can’t say too much about these games tonight. You just have go on. Hopefully, we’ll fight a little bit stronger this weekend.”