BATON ROUGE, La. – After playing on Monday night the No. 11 LSU softball team will have a quick turnaround as the Tigers open a stretch of four games on the road beginning this Wednesday, traveling to take on the Southeastern Louisiana Lady Lions at 6 p.m. at North Oak Park in Hammond.
Wednesday night’s game will be televised live on Cox Sports Television with Garrett Walvoord and Yvette Girouard calling the action. Fans outside of the CST coverage map will be able to watch the game online through WatchESPN, as blackout restrictions are applied for those inside of the network viewing area.
The Tigers go into the first of their final three remaining non-conference midweek games looking to shake off a tough stretch over the weekend as the club dropped all three games of their SEC series to Kentucky over the weekend. The losses dropped the squad’s record to 29-12 on the year and 5-10 within the Southeastern Conference.
LSU has had a brutal stretch of games to open conference play, wrapping up five weeks against top 15 competition, with three league weekends remaining against unranked foes coming up.
While unable to notch a win in the series, the Tigers showed grit in all three games, looking to take some of the positives from the weekend that will help propel them into the final weeks of the regular season beginning Wednesday in Hammond.
“They are going to try to build confidence in little things and trying to celebrate any successes that we have out there and get them back on track,” head coach Beth Torina said. “I think we have to continue to trust the process and be ourselves, while also celebrating small successes, which will hopefully build confidence.”
Helping outhit the Wildcats over the course of the weekend was senior Kellsi Kloss, who hit .500 in the series, going 4-for-8 with a double. Of the team’s 14 hits, three were for extra bases as Kloss and Sandra Simmons each had doubles, while Bailey Landry had a triple.
Bianka Bell continues to lead the team in average at .355, doubles with eight and RBIs at 41, while Sahvanna Jaquish has the team lead in home runs with 10. Landry’s 40 hits are tops for the group, along with her three triples.
The Tigers continue to sport one of the lowest ERA’s in the nation, and this weekend helped solidify that fact as pitchers Carley Hoover and Allie Walljasper held Kentucky to just nine hits and six total runs. The duo held Kentucky to a combined .123 batting clip in the series, not giving up a single extra-base hit.
Hoover actually lowered her ERA over the weekend to 2.38, as she struck out 16 to take her team-leading strikeout total to 145 on the season. She pitched a one-hitter in the opener and struck out double figure batters for the fifth time this year. Kentucky only managed three hits off of her the entire weekend for a .065 average.
Walljasper issued just one walk and struck out four in game two on Sunday, as the sophomore has issued a walk or less in 10 of her 12 starts this year. Along with her pitching, Walljasper has become steady batting at the plate, as she ran her hitting streak to six games over the weekend before it came to an end Monday, the longest stretch of her young career at LSU.
Southeastern Louisiana enters the game with a 19-20 overall record and 5-10 mark in the Southland Conference, dropping all three games to the Lamar Cardinals over the weekend.
LSU has won each of the last 10 meetings against the Lady Lions, winning 11-0 last season in Baton Rouge. The year before in Hammond, LSU defeated SLU 11-3 in six innings.
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.