After a disappointing loss on Tuesday, the Boston University softball team will look to bounce back against University of Massachusetts.
The Terriers (27-13, 9-3 America East) ended their eight-game winning streak with a loss to the College of the Holy Cross. Shaky defense, which had been a problem in the beginning of the season but had begun to improve, was a problem in the defeat.
After gaining a 4-2 advantage in the top of the fifth inning, BU gave up four unearned runs in the bottom half to give the Crusaders the victory. While the only error of the inning was on freshman shortstop Brittany Clendenny, the Terriers had four opportunities to end Holy Cross’s rally but could not.
“We’re a good team, we just had a letdown,” said BU coach Shawn Rychcik. “It’s one inning, I guess, to get one out we just missed. We had the opportunity to get out of the inning and it kind of takes away that we actually played a good game and hit the ball all over the place.”
Rychcik, however, is certain that his team can come back from this poor outing.
“I think we’ll go down and play well,” Rychcik said. “I’m pretty confident. We’ve been playing pretty well. We had a letdown today, like I said, and that doesn’t make us a bad team, we just let one slip away and we’ve got to bounce back. I know we’ll be up and ready to go for it. I expect us to go down there and to play well.”
BU will need to play well in order to take on a hot UMass team that has won 13 of its last 14 games, including a weekend sweep of George Washington University.
For the Minutewomen (22-15, 10-3 Atlantic 10) the most important aspect of the game starts on the mound with junior pitcher Sara Plourde. Plourde, who led the country with over 500 strikeouts last season, has a 1.21 ERA and a 20-11 record.
“Their pitcher – she’s good and they’re going to get some strikeouts tomorrow,” Rychcik said. “But I think we’re pretty good at grinding out at-bats and later in the game I would like to think that we’ll have some opportunities. We just need to keep keeping it close early on, then when we get our opportunities cash them in.”
When the two teams last faced off in the beginning of April, UMass squeaked out a 3-2 win at the BU Softball Field.
After falling behind 3-0 from UMass hits scattered throughout the first six innings, the Terriers took advantage of their at-bats in the bottom half of the sixth inning. Freshman pitcher Holli Floetker had a sacrifice fly to score one run and redshirt freshman Chelsea Kehr, who has been hot at the plate recently, hit a double to right field to bring in senior center fielder April Setterlund.
The comeback fell short, though, when in the seventh inning with runners on second and third, Floetker hit a hard line drive that the UMass third baseman swiped out of the air for the final out of the game.
Rychcik said that the experience the Terriers have acquired over the past month should be useful in defeating the Minutewomen.
“I just think we’ve a little more experience and I think that helps us,” Rychcik said. “I don’t know if we’ve changed a whole lot. We’ve got innings under our belt and they do too… Every time we play we learn something about ourselves and get better. That being said, we’re probably a little better [now] but they are probably the same as well… I expect us to have a good game down there.”
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.
