Softball 2017

[ProudofPride]

Season starts today! 2 games today, right now against Oklahoma State and a second game later today against St. Joseph's. 3 freshmen in the starting lineup in the first game, Alyssa Irons gets the start in the circle. Freshman Kristin Hallam is getting the start at shortstop, Michaela Transue is not in the lineup so she may not be fully healed from last year's season ending injury. In her first career at bat, Hallam singled, she's also the first batter in the lineup. Also of note, OSU just played JMU in the game before this, JMU won 5-2.

We lost to OSU 2-1, despite outhitting them. We couldn't capitalize on their 3 errors. Their two runs scored in the same inning when one of their players hit a double, should've only scored one run but we let a previous base runner steal a base and advance. If I remember correctly, that was one of our big problems last year, besides pitching. We gave up way too many stolen bases.
In the second game, we were dominated 6-0, but now St Joe's stormed back and it's a 6-5 game in the 6th inning, not sure who's pitching.

[stuball888]

Sara Cornell pitched the first 5 innings. And jess Pesslack pitched in final two

[ProudofPride]

We beat Binghamton yesterday 14-6 in 5 innings, Cornell pitched all 5. We lost to USF 7-5 with Irons pitching each inning. We're currently losing to Wisconsin 4-0 after one inning with peslak pitchcinf.
I know it's still early, but it seems like it may another year where we have to beat opponents with our offense, not with pitching. I hope that changes though, since our pitchers are young. What bothers me though is that JMU's freshman pitcher shut out USF, why can't ours?
One good thing, the team has already turned an impressive number of double-plays. Defense appears to be very solid.

[ProudofPride]

Good game against Rutgers earlier today, we won 3-1 in 8 innings. Late start against FGCU, the game just started about 20 minutes ago. It's only the 1st inning and we're already down 5-0. We had a good chance to score in the top of the inning, but couldn't. FGCU already has 6 hits and a stolen base, and we have 2 errors so 4 of the 5 runs are unearned. Irons is already facing their batters for the second time in the same inning because outs aren't coming anywhere the field tonight. Completely came apart at the beginning of the game, and now it's an uphill battle for the rest of it.

BTW, we currently have the worst ERA in the conference. That has to change soon.

[stuball888]

Two wins in a row over FIU 3-0 and BC 3-1. Sara Cornell pitched both games. She seems to have found her mojo. Now we have to get Alyssa Irons straightened out.

[stuball888]

Bumped to the top, We sweep Longwood in a DH today 4-1 and 9-7. Sara Cornell now 6-0 on the year and has established herself as the ace of the staff. We are now 7-5 on the season. Now that basketball season is over , we can look forward to the spring sports. Most notably mens lax and softball.

[ProudofPride]

Longwood is pretty good team, they won 40 games last year and made it to the NCAA tournament. 2nd game was rough, but at least the offense showed up to win it. Peslak got the win in game 2, and Irons got the save.

[ProudofPride]

Awful game against an Idaho State team that was 5-11 entering today. We got shut out by a pitcher who had an ERA of over 4 entering this game. Couldn't capitalize off of their errors.Hard to win when you have absolutely nothing to back up the pitching. No excuse at all to leave 10 players on base. They were loaded twice, once with only 1 out, but the offense was overall pretty stagnant. Cornell had another good outing in the circle, with 5 strikeouts and no walks, both runs she gave up were unearned thanks to 2 errors by our defense. Game 2 against Pacific in 20-30 minutes, and I don't have a good feeling about it since last night made it clear that we have no number 2 pitcher, since 2 and 3 game up a combined 16 runs to Oregon. 2 runs scored total in the 3 games so far in this tournament. Ouch.

[ProudofPride]

We lost 10-4 in game 1 of the double header vs JMU, and we're already down 5-1 in the second game thanks to umpires that are clearly JMU fans. Mickey Dean is arguing with the umps every time Hofstra makes contact with the ball, he robbed Brielle Pietrafesa of a hit earlier this game even though the refs initially called her safe. 2 Hofstra players went down during a JMU at bat, the umpires completely ignore what's going and don't even follow the ball, so of course JMU scored on that, it was ruled an inside the park homerun. And Megan Good has a huge strike zone, but they're calling pretty much everything Cornell throws a ball. The strike zone was a lot more even in the first game when Irons pitched. Regardless, not going to win games when you've already given up 15 runs on the day. We need pitching ASAP.

[HofstraHockey]

After getting pummeled the first two games against JMU, Hofstra comes back with a big win on Sunday. Much better pitching by Cornell, and JMU basically booted the ball around enough to get Hofstra some runs. Big win, now build on it and get going in this league.

[stuball888]

A few things Hofstra has been hurt by the weather inthe northeast I think JMU has double the games under their belt than Hofstra. Good might be the best pitcher in the NCAA She throws 70 MPH or better after getting a few looks at her our batters adjusted we did get 6 hits off of her with 2 doubles and a solo dinger. We need to find another reliable pitcher to compliment Cornell

[ProudofPride]

I wasn't able to follow the game at all live, I was very pleasantly surpassed to come home and see this amazing bounce-back effort. Major props to Sarah Cornell for showing a lot of improvement in less than 24 hours, it takes a lot of willpower to come back and beat a top 10 team after getting destroyed by them the day before. And I was also glad it was Pietrafesa that got the home run, just seemed but like karma after Mickey Dean complained to the umpires and she got a hit taken away on Saturday, can't argue with a well hit shot sent over the fence in fair territory!
The good news is the rest of the conference games will be easier, always good to get the hardest done first.

[ProudofPride]

Well into CAA play, Hofstra is dead last in both batting average and ERA. Very concerning, no matter how young the team is, because there's been virtually no improvement in either category. It's going to be hard to even be a .500 team this year at this rate. Gave up 6 home runs in the 2 games against Towson today.

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[stuball888]

No power or team speed This team will have to play small ball and hit and run to score their runs

[ProudofPride]

Split against Uconn today. First game was pretty ugly on offense, and Cornell gave up a few home runs in the 4-1 loss. 2nd game was a great bounce back, offense came alive for 10 runs, and Irons probably had her best pitching performance of the season, only giving up 2 runs on 3 hits.

BTW, games were played in a D3 facility.

[HUSID80]

No power or team speed This team will have to play small ball and hit and run to score their runs

Tough to play small ball when you have no speed Stu.

[stuball888]

Hit and run sac bunts and most important timely hitting and stringing together hits. That 8 run 5 th inning featured a solo hr and 6 hits and three walks

[ProudofPride]

For some good news today, the softball team swept a very good UNCW team today. UNCW actually came into this series as the #1 team in the conference, ahead of JMU. UNCW hadn't lost a double header or back to back games all season. First game was a dominant 6-0 win off of the Seahawk's ace, the second game was a 9 inning 5-3 thriller.

Noticed today that even UNCW has a turf outfield now. Hofstra is falling even more behind other schools in the conference. It started raining in the first game of the double header but play continued since they didn't have to tarp it. Our baseball team hasn't been relavant in years and even they have turf.

[EvanJ]

Hofstra won the third game 4-0 to improve to 18-17.

[HofstraHockey]

Huge series against Elon this weekend at home. Hofstra is 7-4 in CAA play, Elon is 7-5. They hold the third and fourth spots (the last two playoff spots), respectively. Charleston at 6-6 and Delaware at 5-7 are right behind them. Not only is it obviously important to make the playoffs, but getting the fourth seed means your opening game is likely against JMU, something you'd want to avoid. UNCW plays JMU this weekend, so Hofstra could move up to the 2 spot with some wins.

That Towson rain out and subsequent loss to them is going to bite them in the rear, though. They could be thinking about winning the regular season title, but they'd need some serious stumbling to happen in front of them now.