A pair of home runs proved insufficient in stopping the Ball State University softball team from beating IUPUI Wednesday.
The Cardinals (10-13) bounced back from a four-error, 5-1 loss to the University of Notre Dame Tuesday by committing no errors in a 5-4 win against IUPUI (3-26) Wednesday.
"We played really well defensively," coach Craig Nicholson said. "With Laura (Masch) pitching, our outfield has to play well because she's going to throw a lot of fly balls."
The outfield was the story of the game. The Cardinals outfield was involved in all but three plays during the game. IUPUI scattered its hits all around the grass, making way for long runs to the warning tracks and stretched out dives for the Cardinal trio.
Masch struck out five and gave up four earned runs in 5.1 innings of work. Of the 10 put outs recorded while Masch was on the mound, seven of them were fly balls to the outfield. Four of those flies made it to the warning track before being tracked down by the Ball State outfield.
Nicholson said the wind blowing toward the outfield does not help Masch's tendency to pitch fly balls, but she did well and battled through the windy Muncie conditions.
After IUPUI scored two runs in the sixth to put it up 4-2, Nicholson decided to pull his starter and put in Tuesday's starter, Elizabeth Milian.
Nicholson said he doesn't mind bringing Milian in for relief the day after she pitches a complete game because she doesn't pitch any more than she would if she were practicing.
The Cardinals offense decided to wait until there were two outs to start producing runs. The last four Ball State runs came with outs left in the inning.
"I think hitting with two outs was the best thing we did today," Nicholson said. "Any time you can do that, it's pretty big."
Ball State now looks to Friday and the beginning of its Mid-American Conference schedule. The Cardinals will head north to face Central Michigan University in a doubleheader and then head to Eastern Michigan University for games Saturday and Sunday.
Central Michigan and Ball State were ranked No. 1 and 2 in the MAC West in the pre-season coach's poll.
Nicholson said his team matches up well with Central Michigan, and the games will come down to which team executes better.
"We know what to expect," Nicholson said. "We know what they like to do. They know what we want to do so I don't think there are any real surprises or secrets. It should be a good two games, and it's a good way to start off the conference."
MAC West
1. Central Michigan Current Record:- The strength in the Central lineup is the top three batters, each of whom are the only players batting above .300. They also account for nearly half of the team's total bases.
- Ball State boasts five players with batting averages of more than .300.
- Jen Reifschneider leads the team with a .638 slugging percentage.
- Pitcher Elizabeth Milian has a 1.85 ERA and 87 strikeouts in 90.2 innings.
- Laura Masch follows Milian with a 3.11 ERA and 33 strikeouts in 45 innings of work.
- Meredith Whitney leads the Bronco offense in batting average (.396), slugging percentage (.604), on-base percentage (.453), hits, (19), RBIs (12) and total bases (29). She also leads the team with an ERA of 2.56 and 72 strikeouts.
- The Huskies do not have a player with double-digit runs or RBIs and none of their batters with more than 30 plate appearances are batting over .290.
- NIU's pitchers also have little to boast about. All of their pitchers who have pitched more than two innings have at least a 6.00 ERA.
- No Rocket has more than five RBIs and no one with more than 6 at-bats is batting over .290.
- No pitcher has an ERA under 5.00 or more than 25 strikeouts.
- Eastern has four batters with more than 20 hits and nine with more than 10.
- Lead off Stacie Skodinski has an average of .451 and a slugging percentage of .804 while only being struck out seven times.
- Pitcher Jaclyn Caro has a 2.73 ERA and 55 strikeouts in 66.2 innings of work.
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