NCAA, Softball, Sports

Softball to face Friars in first bout since 2009

In a month that has largely been dictated by rainy weather and typical conference or interleague matchups, the Boston University softball team will be thrown a bit of a changeup.

Senior left fielder Erica Casacci boasts the Terriers' loan perfect fielding percentage. AUDREY FAIN/DFPStaff

Providence College travels to the BU Softball Field on Wednesday for a doubleheader with the Terriers. The Friars have not been on BU’s schedule since the 2009 season, and because only three Terriers are presently in their senior year, a vast majority of the team will be unfamiliar with the Big East opponent.

“It’s nice getting some different teams. . . . I think we try to do that in our preseason too – early in the year – to have some different teams,” said BU coach Shawn Rychcik. “It’s just different looks, different experiences, different types of players. They all kind of make us a little better for the bigger games at the end of the year.”

When the Terriers (27-13, 8-3 America East) and Friars (15-29) squared off three years ago, BU fell in the first game by a score of 6-4 before the second game was canceled due to rain. Of current Terriers, junior Emily Roesch and senior Erica Casacci each started in that game; Casacci had two hits.

Since then, Casacci has been moved from right field to left, and has excelled at the position. She maintains a perfect fielding percentage on 36 opportunities, and bats .291 from the two-spot in the batting order.

Roesch has been solid for BU all year from her spot at second base. She has 18 RBIs and three home runs in 38 games.

While the Terriers appear to have an advantage based on their results this season, Rychcik said the Friars’ record is not likely to be entirely indicative of their skill.

“They won’t be what their record shows because they have played a better competition,” Rychcik said. “They’re struggling a little bit this year, and they’ve had some ups and downs, but for us we just have to make sure we do what we’re supposed to do – come out and get good pitching, good defense and score a few runs.”

Providence’s inability to keep up with its competition is evident in its pitching statistics. Only one pitcher, freshman Shanelle Harrell, maintains a winning record (1-0). But she has pitched just 11 innings. Senior Alicia Grosso and junior Corinne Clauss have accrued records of 7-16 and 7-11, respectively, and have made up for 255 of the staff’s 285.1 total innings. Providence’s overall ERA is 4.00.

In spite of PC’s pitching woes, Rychcik said he does not wish to become overconfident about his team’s offensive chances.

“You never know. Some of the time it’s a specific [pitching] matchup,” Rychcik said. “For some pitcher . . . that shuts another team down, you have no problem with. . . . Sometimes it’s strictly matchups, sometimes somebody gets hot and has a great day, and their pitches are really working.”

However, the Terriers have likely been feeling good about themselves lately. The team has won seven of its last eight games and has held its opponents to two runs or fewer in each of the wins. Three starters – sophomores Jayme Mask, Megan Volpano and Chelsea O’Connor – are batting above.300, and classmate Brittany Clendenny is hot on their heels at .298.

“I would like to think that we’re playing pretty well,” Rychcik said in regards to his team’s current status. “It should take a pretty good performance to shut us down. And the fact that we’re playing good ‘D,’ and we’ve got good pitching, I’d like to think that, looking at things on paper, we stand a pretty good chance to play well against [Providence].”

Website | More Articles

This is an account occasionally used by the Daily Free Press editors to post archived posts from previous iterations of the site or otherwise for special circumstance publications. See authorship info on the byline at the top of the page.

Comments are closed.