Another series away from home, another series lost for the Ladyjacks.
There was a lot of hope and optimism both within the locker room and outside of it leading into the season. Right now, at least on the outside, with a month to go in the season, it has started to fade.
The Ladyjacks softball team sits in the bottom half of the Southland
Conference standings. It's where they were picked in the preseason, but those closer to the program saw potential for much more. Growing pains were expected, no doubt. It is very hard to build a DI program in a single season while relying on junior college talent. Still, the results so far have to be considered mildly disappointing.
Being 5-7 in conference still provides an opportunity to get hot late and make a tournament run - so don't mistake me, the season is far from settled. Here are a few things to keep in mind in the aftermath of Conway:
Where did all of the seniors go? -
In an article that I wrote earlier in the season, just after the five-game losing streak that started off the 2017 campaign, I keyed on senior leadership and how it would impact the team. I did not realize at the time, however, that three of the four seniors that SFA had coming into the season would no longer be with the team before the season had even reached its halfway point.
Brittany Lewis is the only senior remaining on the Ladyjacks squad, and she has predictably picked back up where she left last season, playing like the star she is and leading the team in almost every category offensively (while still playing her typically solid defense).
Even Lewis, though, has struggled for stretches with her bat in the conference season. The offensive depth has lacked the ability to absorb off nights for her. Amber Landry has been one of the more effective transfers, hitting .321 and a team-high five home runs, but the team has hit just .230 overall on the year.
Which leads us to...
The pitching is there, but the bats? Not so much. -
Early scoring has been crucial to the team this season, as run support always makes pitching a little easier. That the Ladyjacks jumped out to an early lead no doubt was a key factor in their ability to save being swept in Conway, as it has been throughout the season.
10 of the 13 wins this season have come when SFA has gotten on the board first. Look for this to continue to be huge down the road, as an early cushion eases the mind of the pitcher that has it more than anyone else, except for maybe the head coach.
Callee Guffey has once again pitched very well this season. She had another solid outing on Saturday within the circle to take the W at Farris Field in Conway. She is now 7-8 on the season, accruing more than half of the team’s wins to this point in the season. Her 1.40 ERA is remarkable, and if the bats can find themselves the potential is good for this team to win.
What is discouraging is that Guffey, even with her numbers being what they are, still sports a losing record. That is, in a lot of ways, a microcosm of the issue here.
The Ladyjacks are 11th of 12 teams in the Southland Conference in batting average. 10th in on base percentage, 10th in runs scored, and 3rd with a 190 strikeouts. The pitching has been very good and the defensive fielding has been acceptable - but without scoring runs it's worth, well, 7th place in the league.
Stringing together a winning streak has been a bit of an issue -
Even being on the road, the series in Conway presented itself as an opportunity for SFA. UCA, now 6-9 in the league, is a team the Ladyjacks were supposed to beat if they saw themselves as better than their current 7th place. It was a series that could have potentially vaulted the Ladyjacks into a solid place entering the final month of the season.
The team that just took a series from in Huntsville the weekend prior is now staring up at Sam Houston State in the standings once again. Central Arkansas currently sits just behind Northwestern State in what is a pretty close race for mediocrity. Only three of the 12 teams in the conference have overall winning records this season, with McNeese (as expected) leading the pack.
A tough test before a couple very winnable series -
The next game, a non-conference matchup, for the Ladyjacks will be against another team with an all-new coaching staff; although that team has fared quite a bit better than ours this season. The upcoming game with the University of Houston is a great way to see what SFA can accomplish against a more highly touted name at home, beginning a seven-game home stand.
The Lady Cougars are 20-17 on the season, but are coming fresh off the licking that they just placed on UConn, pouring in 22 runs in the last game of the home sweep, which is an American Athletic Conference record. UH will be traveling to Tulsa to continue their conference schedule after the one-game stint in Nacogdoches later this afternoon.
After today, the Ladyjacks will take on HBU and UIW, two of the teams towards the very bottom of the standings. With HBU, the SLC's 10th place team up first, here’s to hoping that the results of the game against the Lady Cougars can light a fire under this team so that the Huskies might have something to fear.
