BATON ROUGE, La. – The No. 5 LSU softball team continues its home stand this weekend, hosting the Purple and Gold Challenge at Tiger Park, featuring LSU, Illinois State and Texas Tech this Friday through Sunday in Baton Rouge.
The Tigers will have one game on Friday at 6 p.m. against the Redbirds, with a second game against ISU at 2:30 p.m. Saturday, before taking on the Red Raiders at 5 p.m. to close day two. LSU will close the event with a second game against Texas Tech at 12:30 p.m. Sunday afternoon.
Fans that come out to this weekend’s games will be able to pick up their Turn Up Tuesdays punch card, as a fully punched out card at the end of the season from attendance at all of the midweek regular season games will net fans an LSU softball visor.
For fans unable to make the game, links to live stats will be available on the homepage at LSUsports.net, with continuous updates through the team’s social media pages on Facebook and Twitter.
The Tigers have won each of their last five games and head into the tournament 9-2 on the year, coming off of a 5-0 win over the South Alabama Jaguars Wednesday night at Tiger Park. LSU is now 5-1 at home on the season, looking to improve upon its record in the venue, while also continuing to build for SEC play two weeks from now.
“I think we’re still trying to understand our team, and I think we have a stretch here where we can decide, not necessarily on who the nine best players, but what the best nine is that we’re going to put on the field for SEC play,” head coach Beth Torina said. “The goal is always to win, but right now our focus is on trying to put the right people at the right spots.”
In a total team effort, it took LSU a few innings before finding its stride in the third, plating two runs in that inning and three in the next to score all the runs it needed to be able to pull out the victory, earning all five runs on seven hits. The team has a penchant for scoring in the third, improving to 7-0 when scoring in a frame that the team is currently outscoring its opponents in 27-2.
Sandra Simmons continued to swing a hot bat as she was the only player to earn multiple hits for LSU on the night, as both were doubles in her second multi-hit contest in as many games. Sahvanna Jaquish brought in two for her third multi-RBI game of the season, while Constance Quinn pushed her career-best hitting streak to seven games.
As a team, LSU is hitting .346, outscoring its opponents 84-22 and 23 hits for extra bases.
After making four solid appearances over the weekend, Allie Walljasper got the nod for the start on Wednesday and produced the first seven-inning complete game shutout of an opponent this year by an LSU pitcher, striking out eight in the process. She improved her record to 2-2, lowering her earned run average to 0.28 and ran her streak of consecutive innings without a walk to 24 before allowing only two in the final inning of the contest.
As a staff, LSU has one of the lowest ERA’s in the country at 1.38, with three shutouts and 74 strikeouts.
Illinois State comes into the weekend with a 3-7 overall record after going 2-3 at the Arizona State Littlewood Classic in Tempe. ISU earned wins over Memphis and Montana, while dropping a game to the Grizzlies, Arizona State and Michigan State.
The Red Raiders will play two games before stepping foot in Tiger Park on Saturday, playing a doubleheader at Louisiana-Lafayette on Thursday before playing this weekend. Texas Tech going into Thursday afternoon action is 4-6 after dropping four-of-five at the Cartier Classic in San Diego.
It’s the fifth meeting in the all-time series against the Tigers and Red Raiders, with Saturday’s first meeting being the first since 2006. This is the first time that LSU has played Illinois State in program history.
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.