With his team performing on all cylinders, coach Craig Nicholson is only worried about keeping the Ball State softball team playing well when conference play begins March 30.
Nicholson said the Cardinals (16-7) will have to do that while traveling to California to face their toughest weekend stretch yet in the Mustang Classic. The schedule was planned to give the team some tougher competition heading into conference play, he said.
"We are kind of rolling a little bit right now and I want to make sure that we keep it going, but I also want to make sure that we test ourselves against constantly improving competition," Nicholson said.
The Cardinals are coming off a 3-1 weekend and have won 10 out of their last 11 games and have done so in convincing fashion, outscoring opponents 84-20.
Nicholson said he isn't worried about the team's 0-4 record in one-run games or the lack of close games lately because of how well they have played all around.
"Many of our losses, we've just been right there," Nicholson said. "Early, a couple of those one-run losses were lost on mistakes but the last couple that we've had, it wasn't necessarily any one mistake or any one play."
Mid-American Conference pitcher of the week senior Audrey Workman said the offense has been able to take a lot of pressure off by keeping the team out of close games. Ball State has had a player of the week representative in the MAC every week this season.
Workman has improved as the year has gone on and is now near the top of the MAC pitching leaders in ERA with a 1.39 season mark.
Ball State will play two games against UNLV (14-12) and host Cal-Poly (7-13) and a final game against Lipscomb (16-7). UNLV just beat Purdue and Harvard on Friday and Lipscomb received two votes in the most recent ESPN.com/USA Today Top 25 poll.
Workman is expected to start the first game Friday against UNLV and then flip-flop with senior Kim Mazzapica on Saturday so each pitcher sees both UNLV and Cal-Poly.
The first game against UNLV on Friday begins at 3:30 p.m. (EST) with the second game starting at 8:30 p.m. (EST) against Cal-Poly.
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