Mixed bag today, good and bad...

Posted on: February 17, 2018 at 16:26:38 CT

The first game was very encouraging I thought. Played a top 20 Oklahoma State tough, losing just 3-2, was a much more competitive game than when we played them the first time and were down 6-0 entering the 7th inning before losing 6-3. Freshman Lauren Rice was very sharp today, went the distance, allowed 3 runs but only 1 earned. She struck out 7 and walked only 1. That's a pretty good performance by a freshman against a top 20 team.

Not sure what people expected from this team this year, but we only went 29-28 last year and barely qualified for the NCAA tournament. EE didn't leave the new coach with a ton of talent, and he left the pitching situation, which largely determines any teams fate, in a mess, to put it mildly. So losing a close game to a top 20 team with our freshman pitcher doing really well was encouraging.

Losing to Marshall was very disappointing. Not the loss itself; Marshall is a good program, finished 2017 with an RPI rank of 31 (better than ours was). What was bad was not even being competitive against them, going down 5-0 and losing 8-2. Even worse was our supposed ace, Eli Daniel, had another unremarkable outing, making that 4 in a row after her successful debut against an awful UTEP team. Today she lasted just 1.1 innings before being pulled, gave up 4 runs, 2 earned, struck out no one and walked a batter and hit another one. In her last 4 starts against Oregon, Ok State, South Florida, and Marshall she has pitched just 10.2 innings, given up 20 hits, 20 runs, struck out just 4 hitters and walked 5. This from the girl who shattered the all time SO record in NAIA last year. She is not making the transition to D1 hitters yet. Hopefully she will.

Overall we are not getting shut down pitching from anyone, we are leaving way too many runners on base, not getting timely hitting, and the defense is shoddy again, 5 more errors in the two games today and 14 runners LOB.

Unlike some others though I think we need to wait longer to see what this team is all about. The "look how Sterk destroyed this team" crowd doesn't know what they are talking about. He isn't here anymore, but this is EEs team, his players, his pitching staff. If they aren't performing well it certainly isn't because they aren't being cussed at enough.

I've always said lets get through the first 3 weekends and 17 games and then see where we are. 2 wins tomorrow in very winnable games will give us a 4-2 record for the weekend and some momentum heading into a crucial weekend at the Mary Nutter Classic, where we face 2 top 20 teams and 3 other solid programs. If we have 10-11 losses after the first 3 weekends, then yeah it's time to start panicking, a little, even though there are a ton of games left. Because that would be an indication that we are probably looking at 15+ losses in SEC play and flirting with not making the NCAA tourney, and even worse, perhaps not even qualifying for the SEC tournament in our own ballpark.

I think it's too early for that. Let's see how tomorrow, and next weekend goes. The young pitchers are going to improve with time. Question is how much, and when.

Edited by bluetiger_ at 16:31:26 on 02/17/18