By Tim Robertson
Much has been made of the Pride softball’s pitching prowess, and last weekend against Drexel proved no different, but the consistent and diverse hitting paced the Pride to a conference sweep of the Dragons, to improve its CAA record to 14-3.
All season long coach Bill Edwards preached his “get ’em on, get ’em over and get ’em in” offensive philosophy, but his lone senior used her big bat at the right time on Sunday.
“We can do so many different things, that’s how talented we are. The foundation of this team, offensively, is to get quality at-bats,” Edwards said. “There are so many ways to create runs.”
Ashley Lane knocked her team-leading seventh homerun in the first inning of Sunday’s contest, which provided the Pride with three of its five runs in the game. Lane went 3-for-9 over the weekend, and finished with four runs scored and three RBIs.
“I think Ashley Lane now will start to light it up. The coaches have got her to stop thinking about everything that’s going through her head,” Edwards said.
Lane, the reigning CAA Player of the Year, is third on the team with her .306 average, and has a team-high 36 RBIs.
Carolann Lubach added to the Pride’s quick start to the final game of the series when she knocked in second baseman Casey Fee on a groundball to shortstop. Fee, who leads off for the Pride, walked twice and went 4-for-9 over the weekend, while scoring three runs. She now has an eight-game hit streak, which mirrors the Pride’s win streak.
“On Sunday, we hit the ball much better. We had better at-bats,” Edwards said Wednesday. “We were more aggressive in the batter’s box looking to hit the ball rather than analyze the pitch.”
Junior Genevieve Haney wrapped up Sunday’s scoring, when her RBI double plated Lane. Haney platooned with freshman Laura Jaxheimer all season long at third base, but Edwards said he now has tapped his junior as the starter based upon her defensive play.
Defensively, a pair of errors that led to the Dragon’s only run served as the only blemish on the Pride’s score sheet. Sophomore Kayleigh Lotti fanned a dozen, walked a pair and gave up just three hits in a complete game performance. With her second win of the weekend, Lotti collected her 16th for the year.
“We played better than what the score indicated,” Edwards said of the 5-1 final.
The coach said his team seemed tentative on Saturday, despite a lopsided 10-1 win in the second game, because as he said, it had more to do with Drexel’s miscues than the Pride crushing the ball.
“Drexel gave us those runs in the second game, so that score is not an indication of us pounding the ball,” Edwards said.
Walks, passed balls and errors kept the Pride’s five-run sixth inning alive in the second game. The Pride did muster its fair share of offense in the sixth, as junior pitcher Courtney Oliver hit an RBI single and Melissa Hodge ripped a two-run triple. Previously, Hodge hit a sacrifice fly in the third inning, scoring Lubach. Adding to the box score, Haney showed some offensive potential with a two-out RBI single for the Pride’s first run of the game.
Oliver not only shone at the plate, but in the circle, as well. After Lotti allowed two walks, Edwards replaced her with his junior pitcher. Lotti finished with five strikeouts. Oliver got out of the third-inning jam, after one of the runners she inherited scored.
Oliver fanned a trio of Dragons over 3.1 innings of work, and gave up just one run. She earned her seventh win of the season.
“I wanted to get Courtney some pitching time,” Edwards said. “I felt we need to get her some work. She threw the no-no the Wednesday before and pitched great. We needed to get her some conference time.”
Oliver shutdown the Dragons with her placement when she had command of just one pitch, and her sense of competitiveness also allowed her to quiet Drexel, her coach said.
“She’ll find a way to get you. She willed her way to get the hitters out,” he said. In the series opener, Lotti turned in another splendid performance, striking out a career-high 15 and allowed just one run on three hits.
Offensively, junior Pam Dreslinski knocked an RBI double to begin the scoring in the first inning, and Hodge added one more the following frame. She led off with a single, stole second, moved to third on a wild pitch and scored on a sacrifice fly from Michele DePasquale.
The Pride garnered one more run in the second inning after a major Drexel error. Erika Bernstein hit a two-out bunt single and successfully rounded the bases after the Dragons threw the ball into right field. Hofstra would score one more in the seventh on a two-out RBI single by Fee, scoring freshman Kris Root.
“When you look offensively, different people have carried us through this stretch,” Edwards said. “We’re getting some people, whoever it is, to step up in that critical part of the game.”
