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Wow I am just reading this. On the NCAAsports.com softball scoreboard it has ya'll winning 2-1. now I read that you lost. They need to correct that. Sorry about that cajun fans. Well now move on to your great baseball team. I think they can do some damage.
Ladies were just too beat up, with 3-4 players playing out of position and a pitcher with a bum knee, and blister on her throwing hand, not good.Quote:
Originally Posted by beaux66
They can now go an get a well deserved rest and heal up, train up, and reqroup as a still a very young but an even MORE talented team for next year.
DaddyCajun
ps I just really love those Lady Cajuns, still number one in my heart and will be number one in the Country in the near future!!!!
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COLLEGE STATION, Texas - If it's possible for one play to epitomize how a season that had gone so wrong could get worse, it happened here on Saturday afternoon.
Stunning. Shocking. Unbelievable.
Pick the adjective, because they all apply.
"This team left a lot of unfinished games on the field and that's what I'm most disappointed about," UL coach Stefni Lotief said following a 2-1 loss in eight innings against Sam Houston State at Texas A&M's softball complex.
And the final sequence that eliminated the Cajuns from the College Station Regional went like this:
With one out in the bottom of the eighth, SHS's Casey Everitt reached base on a throwing error by shortstop Karli Hubbard. Two pitches later, Stephanie Mosley flared a ball into shallow right field. That's when the end came for the Cajuns.
<center><p><a href="http://www.theadvertiser.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070520/SPORTS/705200356/1006" target="_blank">The rest of the story</a>
Bob Heist
bheist@theadvertiser.com
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Making a diving attempt on Mosley's hit, UL second baseman Tara Hamilton saw the ball ricochet off the side of her glove and into an open space past right fielder Holly Tankersley.
Tankersley scrambled to retrieve the ball and then made a brilliant throw to home plate. The throw beat Everitt, who never stopped running on the play, but a creative sideways slide around Cajuns catcher Jessica Lemoine scored the winning run.
Just like that, a softball season at UL ended on a four-game losing streak for the first time since 1981.
"This isn't what we strive for with our program," Lotief said. "We'll take a couple of days and then sit down and examine things and make some changes. This is disappointing, but we will move forward and put things in place so this does not happen again."
UL's regional stay ended with another lackluster performance from its makeshift lineup.
Minus Desi Chatman - who suffered a knee injury in Friday's nine-inning loss against Houston - the Cajuns managed just four hits off SHS sophomore Brandi Crnkovic. In fact, a day after Crnkovic surrendered eight runs in 3.2 innings to Texas A&M, the only hitter that had success was Melissa Verde.
The sophomore third baseman finished 3-for-3 and provided the lone run with a mammoth solo homer to right field on the first pitch of the second inning. But other than Verde, the rest of the Cajuns went a combined 1-for-23.
"At that moment (after the home run), I thought we were back on track," said Verde. "I thought everybody would get in there and get it done, but it didn't work out that way."
Overall in the regional, UL batted just 11-for-61 (.180). Verde's homer was the only extra-base hit.
Entering the tournament, UL had a .279 team batting average and led all the schools involved with 68 home runs and 140 extra-base hits.
"There are a lot of reasons with us being so young and shuffling things around because of injuries, but that doesn't change the fact that we just didn't get it done," Lotief said. "That's really the only stat that matters."
Crnkovic finished with one walk and five strikeouts to improve to 20-12. UL freshman Brittany Cuevas (31-11) scattered six hits, walked one and fanned seven while suffering her second straight extra-inning loss. Sam Houston's first run in the game came on a solo homer by Everitt in the fourth inning. It was the fourth straight game, and fifth in the last six, that Cuevas had given up a home run.
Each of those games ended in a Cajuns loss, including on Friday when Houston's Haley Valis hit a walk-off bomb in the ninth inning to beat UL, 4-3.
"This is just hard to deal with," said Cuevas, who finished tied for fourth-place in program history for single-season wins. "But you have to take this experience, build on it for next year and turn it into a positive.
"It's not going to be fun, but we have to deal with this and move on."
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COLLEGE STATION, Texas - History and tradition don't mean a thing if you're not packing enough bullets.
And it doesn't take a genius to figure out that the worst end to a season for UL softball since 1981 hinges on that reality.
"When you're young like this, and then compound it with injuries, that takes a toll," Cajuns coach Stefni Lotief said after her team was unceremoniously shown the door from the College Station NCAA Regional by Sam Houston State.
"But this isn't what we expect from our program, either. Being honest, we have some things to look at - and we're going to do that."
But it has been a wacky year for the kids from over at Lamson Park. Because, truthfully, early on, UL was easily among the nation's elite.
Before March arrived, the Cajuns had taken two games apiece from both then-ranked No. 14 Georgia and No. 17 Baylor. Heck, the team won 20 of its first 22 games, and went toe-to-toe with No. 2 Arizona, losing 2-0 in eight innings on March 16.
But that's when signs of trouble started to leak through the crevices.
<center><p><a href="http://www.theadvertiser.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070520/SPORTS/705200354/1006" target="_blank">The rest of the story</a>
Bob Heist
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By early April, freshman pitcher Brittany Cuevas started to breakdown as she dealt with shoulder and ankle injuries. Then UL was upset by McNeese State, 6-5 in 10 innings, on April 3 and shockingly swept by Florida International in a three-game Sun Belt Conference series on April 6-7.
UL rallied to win nine of its next 11 games - including a doubleheader sweep of Houston, which will play for the College Station Regional title today - but then lost five of the next six to see the season end.
During the limp to the finish line, the Cajuns dropped a game to UL Monroe that cost the team its seventh straight Sun Belt regular-season title. The only conference tournament champion in Sun Belt history, UL's run at No. 8 ended in consecutive losses to North Texas and Western Kentucky.
Then the team drew its 17th regional selection and promptly went two-and-through for only the second time. And looking back at the first, there's a big difference between losing to Houston and Sam Houston State then Florida State and Oklahoma State, like the 1991 team experienced.
No disrespect intended. But it's a point worth making.
"Disappointing," Lotief said. "If there was a better word for what we've gone through, I'd use it. But there isn't."
Of course, UL just never had many legs to stand on late in the season.
Holly Tankersley was hampered by assorted injuries and wasn't able to provide ample support for Cuevas. That was a contribution expected before the season.
Starting shortstop Codi Runyan missed well over the final month with a herniated disc in her back. Outfielder Desi Chatman suffered a severe knee sprain in the first game of the regional.
A team that was starting five freshmen - the most of any school at this weekend's regional - had several out of position due to necessity because of other assorted injuries. And those young faces, which occupied most of the bottom half of the batting order, were grossly unproductive on the big stage.
Help is coming next year with the fourth-rated recruiting class in the country, but that story was mute after Sam Houston State - a program that was competing at the NAIA level in the 1980s - made UL its first win at a Division I regional.
And that's the point of this column:
With it's tradition, UL shouldn't be losing to the likes of Houston and Sam Houston State in a postseason situation. In their NCAA history, the Cajuns were 40-32 coming to Texas A&M; Houston was 1-2 and Sam Houston had never made an appearance.
But you also have to have the bullets to pull the trigger on.
UL didn't.
"This isn't what we strive for with our program," Lotief said. "We'll take a couple of days and then sit down and examine things and make some changes. This is disappointing, but we will move forward and put things in place so this does not happen again."
Bob Heist is sports editor for The Daily Advertiser. He can be reached at (337) 289-6402 or bheist@theadvertiser.com
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