Softball vs Ole Miss Games 2/3

[psycHOGlogist]

We dropped both Saturday's and Sunday's games. Both -- especially Sunday -- had their upside, but ultimately our defense (and to a lesser degree, pitching) could not seal the deal.

On Saturday, Clark hit a 2-run dinger to put us up 2-0, but Ole Miss scrabbled together 7 unanswered runs to take the game 7-2. Moll gave up 9 walks, which really was the killer. Free bases lead to runs almost all the time for us, it seems.

On Sunday, well ... it was another crushing heartbreaker of a collapse in the 7th inning. We were leading 5-1 heading into the B7 on the strength of a Nicole Schroeder Grand Slam and a Shelby Hiers solo shot. Moll had pitched very, very well to that point, limiting walks, inducing ground balls, and generally managing the game.

And then she and the defense just fell apart. To be fair to Moll -- she threw EVERY PITCH of the series. Something like 400+ pitches in 3 days. Can't blame her for wearing out a little (and there really isn't a good option to bring in, unfortunately). But she walked the first batter, the second got a seeing eye hit, and then Yanetti let a ball roll right through her wicket to score a run. Yanetti threw another ball away later in the inning to give up another run. But the last two runs scored when Moll walked in batters with the bases loaded. None of the 7th inning runs -- none of 5! -- were earned. Hogs lose 6-5. What do you even do with that?

Tough loss. Hate to be on the plane coming home. I feel bad for Yanetti and Moll, both of whom had very good games (Yanetti had a couple hits and made some good plays in the field) overall and one pretty disastrous inning.

Onward.

[nwahogfan1]

Does our Defense have the talent to be developed or do we need to keep recruiting better players?


Pitching is doing a decent job to me but errors are killing us.  Anytime you give a team extra outs it gives them confidence and that is a huge part of the game. 

When we get a team that makes that great defensive stop it will help our pitching confidence for sure.

[psycHOGlogist]

IMO we need to be recruiting different players. Not really meaning to criticize who we have, but the only infielders in yesterday's game who were playing the position they were originally recruited to play are Pocklington (2b) and Hiers (C; apparently the Archuleta experiment is over? Hiers has started the last 4 or 5 games behind the plate). Yanetti (SS) is originally a 3b, Russell (3b) was recruited as an OF, and Schroeder (1b) was I think initially recruited as a DP? She looks pretty good at 1b (though she isn't crazy athletic), so it's possible she's played it before. When the staff is moving that many pieces around, it seems clear to me that they need some newer pieces. In the meantime, they are trying to coach up the ones they have.

And to be fair, we have made the occasional great defensive play this year. It's not all been bad. But it's not really the misses on trying to make the spectacular play that are killing us. It's the mistakes on routine plays -- especially in clutch moments -- that has been fatal. Coach Diefel is clearly trying to change the mentality on the team with respect to expecting to win. She and Coach Boo have been regularly tweeting out a lot of motivational quotes about the mental aspect of the game.