BATON ROUGE, La. – After a string of non-conference opponents, the LSU softball team returns to SEC play this weekend, opening a three-game league series at Kentucky this Friday, Saturday and Sunday in Lexington.
All three games of the series will be covered as Friday and Sunday will both be streamed live on SEC Network+ available through WatchESPN with Dave Baker and Carol Bruggeman at 5 p.m. and 12 p.m., respectively. Saturday’s contest will air live on the SEC Network with Cara Capuano and Michelle Smith at 11 a.m.
ESPN 104.5/9 will carry the series against Kentucky on the radio home for LSU softball, with Patrick Wright calling the action, beginning 15 minutes before first pitch at John Cropp Stadium. Live stats can be found at LSUsports.net and continuous updates through the team’s social media pages.
The No. 1 Tigers are looking to take the same momentum they’ve earned over this stretch of non-conference games back into conference play this weekend, as the team has won its last six overall after capping a four-game homestand with an 8-0 win over South Alabama on Tuesday in five innings. The stretch helped LSU improve to 24-0 at home, hitting the road for just the second time this year officially and third time all season.
Even with a 31-1 overall record and 5-1 SEC mark, LSU goes into another highly competitive league series as the visitors, as No. 16 Kentucky provides a unique challenge in that the Wildcats are 1-5 in conference and will be playing its first home SEC series of the season coming off of a sweep at the hands of Auburn last week.
“We’ve got our work cut out for us with Kentucky. They do such a great job with preparing for their opponents,” head coach Beth Torina said. “They’re coming off being swept and I think that’s a bad spot to be in for us. I think they typically respond really well to that in their history, but they’re a great team, they’re well coached and they will be well prepared. We are going to have our work cut out for us. We’ve got a lot of things to defend, things they want to do, goals they want to achieve and I think that we’ve got to continue to push ourselves to make it there.”
LSU comes into the series with the third best hitting offense in the league at .365, while holding the top spot in earned run average at 1.30. This was no more evident than on Tuesday when the team produced eight runs on seven hits in the five innings, while capturing the group’s 14th shutout on just two hits against the Jaguars. The Tigers put up crooked numbers in each of the first three innings and have now scored multiple runs in 57 innings on the year.
In a race to see who can break a record that has barely stood a calendar year, LSU got its 35th home run of the season from the bat of Sahvanna Jaquish, her 13th this season, among a 2-for-2 day with two RBI’s and two runs scored against South Alabama. Leading the team in multi-RBI games with 15 so far this year, she accounts for all but one of the home runs from the sophomore class and is one ahead of Bianka Bell at this point after setting the new record at 17 last season as a freshman.
Bell still leads the team with a .554 hitting percentage, as her average and 56 total hits also lead the conference as well. The junior is on a career-long 13-game hitting streak at the moment, which is the third longest for any current member of the team and the second longest this season alone.
A.J. Andrews still continues to lead the nation in triples, hitting her eighth of the year against the Jaguars, which as it stands is tied for the third-most in a single-season by an LSU player and all-time with 19. Leading into the weekend, seven of LSU’s nine starters on the year are hitting .300 or better.
Selman ran through the USA batting order with relative ease in her start in the circle, as she helped lower the staff ERA with her performance, tossing her team-leading fifth shutout of the year. In five of her starts, the Tiger offense has run-ruled the opponent in the other dugout, as she trimmed her average to 1.30.
Kentucky enters the series 21-8 overall, beginning the season playing their first 19 games of the year on the road. The Wildcats have won five games at home, however, with wins over Ohio, Indiana and Eastern Kentucky. UK is batting .286 at the plate this season, led by Christian Stokes’ .374 average and six home runs, while Kelsey Nunley has nine wins in the circle and a 1.89 ERA.
LSU dropped a heartbreaker to the Wildcats in the semifinals of the conference tournament last season in extra innings, but in the all-time series the Tigers hold a 38-7 record in meetings.
For all of the latest news and information on Tiger softball, visit www.lsusports.net/softball. Fans can also follow the program on its social media outlets at www.Facebook.com/lsusoftball along with @lsusoftball and @BethTorina on Twitter and @lsusb on Instagram.