After winning its last four road games, the Boston University softball team will return to its own field to play nine straight. The team will kick off its longest home stretch of the season with a game against Boston College on Thursday and a three-game series against University of Maine on Saturday and Sunday.
On Wednesday, the Terriers (16-8, 3-0 America East) took on University of Connecticut in a pitchers’ duel. BU was able to edge out the Huskies on a second-inning home run from freshman third baseman Megan Volpano. The round-tripper was the first of Volpano’s collegiate career.
On the mound, BU continued its pitching domination with seven shutout innings of work from freshman Holli Floetker. Floetker gave up only four hits and walked one while striking out six Huskies. Her sharp performance lowered her ERA to 1.56.
First to face off against BU will be the Eagles (7-18, 3-3 Atlantic Coast Conference), who are coming into the game after suffering a three-game sweep at the hands of Virginia Tech last weekend. Leading BC at the plate is junior Brittany Wilkans, who is hitting .392 with 26 RBIs. Despite having five players hitting over .300, the Eagles are ranked seventh out of the eight teams in the ACC in batting with a team batting average of .267.
BC is also in the ACC basement as far as pitching. The Eagles have thrown four pitchers, Allison Gage, Morgan Kidd, Nicole D’Argento and Amanda Horowitz. The lowest ERA out of the four belongs to Gage, who is 2-8 with a 4.77 ERA. The team’s overall ERA is 5.17.
While the cross-town rivalry is a big deal in many other sports, BU coach Shawn Rychcik says softball isn’t one of them.
“It’s nice,” Rychcik said. “We’re well aware it’s BC, but I don’t think it motivates us anything different. Our goal is just to play as good as we can and hopefully that’s enough to get by. We never like to lose to any of our cross-town rivals, be it Harvard or whoever… But we’re not suddenly going to play that much better or make it a point to win this game because it’s against BC.”
Sophomore hurler Whitney Tuthill will get the nod for the Terriers against BC. Tuthill currently has a 1.56 ERA, landing her third in the AE as of Wednesday night.
While the BC game is important to the team, Rychcik said that the main focus was on this weekend’s series against Maine.
“The main focus still is what overshadows the week with the conference games on the back hand of things,” Rychcik said. “You just kind of want to do some things to prepare… The [mid-week games] count so you definitely want to win and we’ll definitely go after every game, but there is a thought of how to prepare ourselves best for the weekend… Our goal is to win those midweek games and hopefully that prepares us for the weekend.”
The Black Bears (12-19, 3-0 AE) will be coming into the game after shutting out Husson University 6-0 on Wednesday. Maine averages a little over three runs per game and has two batters, seniors Terren Hall and Kali Burnham, who are hitting over .300. As a whole the team is .225 at the plate.
Despite the low team batting average, Rychcik said that he anticipated Maine to hit because of past games against them.
“Maine’s going to swing the bat,” Rychcik said. “They’re going to come in here and hit. They usually play a pretty decent defense and they just traditionally hit… I think we just need to hit the ball, throw well, hit our spots and play good defense.
“The [conference] games mean a little more but they’re all played the same way. The ball is thrown to the plate, you hit it, you catch it, you field it. What we’re going to do is play just like we played [Wednesday], just like we played the ones on the weekend, just like we did the prior 27 games… If we play the best we can and do all the things you need to do in softball, I’m pretty sure we’re going to be on top then.”
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