Thursday afternoon was a difficult one overall for the Boston University softball team. The Terriers (20-9, 1-1) lost a difficult away game by the score of 6-4 to Providence College (10-17). Mother Nature stopped any hope of BU revenge by dropping enough rain to cancel the second game of a Wednesday afternoon doubleheader.
Before the rains hit, the bats of the Friars hit BU first. Tied at four after five-and-a-half innings, PC was able to summon a two-run rally thanks to a clutch two-run home run by Gina Rossi over the center-field wall off BU senior pitcher Cassidi Hardy.
The home run turned out to be the final dagger for the Terriers. PC’s Alicia Grosso set down the side in the top of the seventh to end the game on the sourest of notes for BU.
Of the six runs by the Friars, four of them went under the ‘earned run’ category for Hardy. Despite pitching all six innings for the Terriers, the four earned runs for the senior signaled one of her worst performances on the mound of the season. Hardy fell to 9-4 on the season.
From the get-go, the Friars proved to be a difficult opponent for Hardy, the America East Pitcher of the Week. PC scored three runs in the first two innings alone. Hardy settled down over the next two innings, but was unable to keep the PC bats down for long. In the fifth, Christy Becker teed off on a Hardy pitch for a solo home run to tie the game at four before Rossi put PC on top for good with her two-run shot in the next inning.
On the other side of the scorecard, the Terriers were hot in the batter’s box even though they could not muster enough runs to overcome the Friars. Senior Shayne Lotito continued her hitting streak, extending it to 11 games with a 1-for-2 performance. Lotito also had another stolen base that will only help cement her national ranking in that category. Junior Rachel Moeller was also productive, going 2-for-3 on the day, and freshman Erica Casacci had two hits.
BU had a seemingly solid offensive performance with eight different Terrier batters recording a hit on Wednesday. The story of the game, though, was the Friars’ ability to convert hits into runs. PC was perfect with six runs on six hits.
The Terriers were down early with the Friars leading 2-1 in the first inning. Casacci stepped up with a single and a stolen base to help her team attempt to cut into the lead. Moeller capitalized with a single up the middle in the second inning that tied the game. With the bases loaded lin the inning, senior Christy Leath drew a walk that plated Lotito to give the Terriers their first lead of the game.
PC came back quickly in the bottom half of the second inning when senior Gina Rossi hit a home run to right-center field that tied the game at 3-3.
The game remained tied until the fifth inning when BU gained the lead for the second time. Senior Brooke Hudson hit a single up the middle that drove in junior Rachel Herbert. PC followed up again with another home run, this time from junior Christy Becker, to even the score at 4-4.
The Friars honed in on Hardy in the sixth inning. With two PC runners on base, Rossi stepped up to the plate and hit her second home run of the game to finalize the 6-4 victory for the Friars.
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