In its first weekend at home this season, the Boston University softball team kept its recent momentum rolling, sweeping doubleheaders with the College of the Holy Cross on Saturday and Dartmouth College on Sunday.
On Saturday, BU (15-10) put on an offensive show to bury the Crusaders (4-12), 12-5 and then 13-3. Sunday’s games against the Big Green (1-14) were closer, 4-0 and 4-3, but the Terriers did not trail at any point in 14 innings against Dartmouth.
Senior pitcher Megan Currier struggled with the Crusaders early in the first game, giving up three runs in the top of the first and two more in the second, but the Terriers weren’t rattled. Midway through the second inning, senior pitcher Cassidi Hardy took over in the pitcher’s circle and didn’t allow a run for the rest of the game after inheriting a 5-1 deficit.
Hardy’s three-hit, eight-strikeout performance over five innings gave BU’s offense a chance to get back in the game. They did just that in the bottom of the second, exploding for four runs on three hits to tie the score, 5-5.
Junior outfielder April Setterlund led off the fourth inning with what turned out to be the only run the Terriers needed: a solo homer that cleared the trees behind the outfield fence and bounced out onto Malvern Street to give BU a 6-5 lead.
Setterlund, the Terriers’ leader in batting average (.567), struck again in the fifth with her second home run of the day. Junior outfielder Christina Valdes singled, sophomore infielder Erica Casacci walked and Setterlund drove them both in with a shot to left center.
Senior Rachel Moeller stole home on a passed ball in the sixth to make it 10-5 in favor of BU, and freshman designated hitter Whitney Tuthill rounded out the scoring with a two-run homer of her own, scoring shortstop Emily Roesch.
Tuthill took the circle for the Terriers in the second game, holding Holy Cross to three runs on six hits and improving her record to 4-2. She also hit her third home run of the season in the top of the second, scoring Moeller, but by that point BU essentially had the game in hand after an explosive first inning.
Hebert and Casacci got on base to start the inning, and Setterlund brought them both home with yet another home run, this one to left field. Junior catcher Caitlin Rentler doubled and stole third, scoring when Cowan grounded out, and Crusader pitcher Amanda Audette walked in a run with Valdes at the plate.
Tuthill’s second-inning home run made the game 10-0, and Valdes, not typically a power hitter, followed her with another blast over the fence. The Crusaders put some hits together to cut the lead to 11-3 in the third, but unfortunately, they had to pitch to Setterlund again in the bottom of the inning.
After taking the first pitch high and inside, she smashed her fourth and final home run of the day to right center, scoring Cascacci and giving BU a 10-run lead that held until the fifth inning, when the game ended early due to the NCAA mercy rule.
“I didn’t think Holy Cross had a dominant pitcher who could just shut us down,” said BU coach Shawn Rychcik. “We hit well and pitched pretty well and dug ourselves out of one hole with our hitting. The [pitching changes] were just to kind of give them different looks, not because anybody was throwing badly.”
On Sunday, Hardy shut out Dartmouth in the first game with another dominant performance as she did not allow a hit until the fifth inning. Rentler and Cowan hit a pair of RBI doubles in the fourth, and Tuthill contributed an RBI single. Rentler also drove home Casacci in the fifth to give BU the 4-0 win.
The top of the order came through once again in the second game as Hebert and Setterlund had three hits each while Casacci and Rentler added one apiece. Setterlund knocked a triple into deep center field with her first at-bat, scoring Hebert and Casacci, and then crossed the plate herself after a single by Rentler.
Dartmouth chipped away at the 3-0 lead, scoring in the third and fifth and tying the game on a solo home run by freshman Noelle Ramirez in the sixth. But Hebert led off with a shot of her own in the bottom of the seventh to secure the Terrier victory.
“We’ve gotten a little more comfortable, finally,” Rychcik said on Sunday. “Our pitching’s gotten a little better, we’re still hitting like we were, and I think the key is that we’ve jumped out in some of these games and taken some of the pressure off of the pitching and the defense. We’re starting to feel comfortable right at the right time, going into conference.”
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.
