BATON ROUGE, La. – Opening the final week of its season-long home stand, the No. 5 LSU softball team hosts the Longwood Lancers in a doubleheader Tuesday evening beginning at 5 p.m. with the second game scheduled for 7:30 p.m. at Tiger Park.
Tuesday’s contests are the first scheduled regular season meetings against one another, as fans that come out to the game are one step closer to receiving an LSU softball visor at the end of the season during the year-long Turn Up Tuesday promotion. A link to live stats will be available at LSUsports.net, with continuous updates through the team’s social media pages.
The Tigers enter a new week riding a 15-game winning streak with a pair of non-conference clashes before the group opens Southeastern Conference play this Friday against Alabama. But before LSU can turn its attention to the Crimson Tide, the Tigers will set its sights on the Lancers who have been a regular in the NCAA Tournament over the years and come into the games with a 9-5 record.
LSU hosted its final non-conference tournament of the year over the weekend, sweeping its four opponents and winning all five games on the docket to sit at 19-2 overall, with a 15-1 home record. The Tigers run-ruled all but one of their opponents, scoring eight or more runs in every game with two double-digit scoring outputs.
Seemingly every player had a hand in LSU’s overall hitting average that nearly reached .500 for the weekend, earning 62 total hits and outscoring Liberty, Louisiana Tech, Memphis and Tennessee Tech 58-8. Hardly sticking with one lineup for an extended period of time, the result has the entire lineup starting to play some of its best softball when it matters most in the coming days.
“We’re so deep this year and we’re trying to find the right combination of players this year,” head coach Beth Torina said. “I like that we have players that are stepping up and doing the right things for our team. I think we’re getting closer to understanding who we are.”
One player that was able to do that over the course of six games last week was freshman Amber Serrett who finished with double-digit hits and hit over .700 while currently third on the team in batting average at .489. The Spring, Texas, native has seen time in the field at shortstop and left field, while also hitting in the order as a designated player.
The team leader in home runs, RBIs, runs scored, walks, on-base percentage and slugging, junior Sahvanna Jaquish accounted for all three of the team’s home runs, including having two in the Liberty game for her first multi-home run game of the season and fifth of her career. Jaquish’s .671 on-base percentage leads the nation, while her .549 batting average is best in the SEC along with her 1.059 slugging percentage that is second in the league and eighth in the country.
Earlier Monday, Carley Hoover was named the SEC Pitcher of the Week, the first weekly league award for the sophomore after her 3-0 performance over the weekend. Hoover, who currently has an 8-0 record with three shutouts, struck out 26 in 13.2 innings, pitching the 37th no-hitter in LSU history and her first overall.
While Hoover’s no-hitter ended the weekend, an even rarer occurrence helped open the tournament as pitcher Sydney Smith threw just the fourth perfect game in LSU softball history against Tennessee Tech. The freshman needed a little more than 50 pitches to breeze her way through the first perfect game since 2011.
With a no-hitter and perfect game within just days of each other, the only other instance of that happening was Tiffany Garcia in 2006 who threw a perfect game against Grambling on February 15, 2006 and a no-hitter against Mississippi Valley State on February 17. Before that, Britni Sneed threw a no-hitter against Tennessee on March 17, 2001 against Tennessee, before combining with Sarah Meadors to throw a perfect game the very next day against the Vols.
As a staff, LSU held an ERA of 1.04 and the four opponents had a batting average of .117 against Hoover, Smith and Baylee Corbello on the weekend.
Following Tuesday, the Tigers will host the first home SEC series of the weekend as they take on Alabama this Friday-Sunday. The Saturday and Sunday’s games will both be televised live on the SEC Network.
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.