Lady Cajuns vs Southern Miss Part II

[NewsCopy]

UL - Louisiana’s Lady Cajuns needed 11 innings to claim the 2008 Louisiana Classics Softball Tournament title. The Cajuns (8-0) battled Southern Miss for 11 full innings and squeak out a 3-2 victory on Sunday afternoon at Alfred and Helen Lamson Ragin’ Cajuns Softball Park. Knotted at 2-2 in the top of the 11th inning, Lana Bowers (Crosby, Texas) tripled down the right field line to get things going for the Cajuns. Karli Hubbard (Lafayette, La.) hit a 1-0 pitch up the middle for a base hit to score Bowers from third and send the crowd of 654 into a frenzy. In the bottom half of the inning, the Cajuns walked the leadoff runner. But a heads up defensive play by Melissa Verde (Beaumont, Texas) on an attempted sacrifice bunt attempt eliminated the lead runner. A pair of fly balls ended the game and gave the Cajuns their eighth straight win to start the season. Offensively for the Cajuns, Bowers, Hubbard and Katie Smith (Ruston, La.) all finished with multiple hits. Bowers finished the game 3-for-5 with a pair of singles and her game-changing triple. Hubbard had a pair of singles, but none more important than her RBI hit in the 11th. In the circle, Ashley Brignac (River Ridge, La.) threw a complete game. The 11 innings tossed is the most by any Cajuns pitcher since Melissa Coronado (1999-02) had 13.0 innings pitched against UMass on May 16, 2002. Brignac finished the game with 12 strikeouts and worked her way out of numerous jams. She scattered five hits and relied on solid Cajuns defense to hold Southern Miss to just two runs. For the first time during the 2008 season, the Cajuns trailed in a game. In the bottom of the first inning, Southern Miss led off the inning with a walk and moved the runner with a sacrifice bunt. A wild pitch moved the runner to within 60-feet of home. A bloop single into left field scored the runner and gave USM a 1-0 edge after one complete inning of play. The Cajuns answered in the top half of the second. Gabriele Bridges (Lafitte, La.) singled through the right side of the infield for the base runner of the game for UL. Courtney Trahan (Maurice, La.) entered the game to pinch run for Bridges. She moved to second on a Jessica Dupont (Alexandria, La.) walk. A long fly ball moved Trahan to third base and a wild pitch plated the runner. UL grabbed the lead in the top of the fifth inning. Bowers singled to left centerfield. A pair of groundouts moved Bowers to third base. Verde singled to the shortstop to plate the runner and give the Cajuns a 2-0 edge after four and a half innings of play. The Golden Eagles loaded the bases in the bottom of the fifth inning without the benefit of a hit. After a strikeout to start the inning, Brignac walked the next batter and clipped a batter with an inside pitch. She worked the count full on the next batter and just missed out on an outside pitch to load the bases. A deep sacrifice fly tied the score, but Brignac struck out the next batter to end the inning, leaving the score knotted at 2-2. USM threatened in the bottom of the sixth. A pair of singles gave the Golden Eagles runners on first and second with no outs. The runners tried to advance on a pitch that almost got away from Bowers. The sophomore catcher never lost control of the ball and fired the ball down to third base for the first out of the inning. With a runner on second base and one out, Brignac took over the inning. She struck out the next batter and proceeded to fan the following batter on three straight pitches to end the inning and the Southern Miss threat. Both teams had chances in the extra frames, leaving baserunners in scoring position. Each team left at least one base runner in every frame except the Southern Miss tenth inning when the Cajuns retired the Golden Eagles in order. The Ragin’ Cajuns will return to action on Friday, Feb. 29 as they head to Columbus, Ga., for the NFCA Leadoff Classic. The Cajuns will open up the tournament with a game against North Carolina. The rest of the story Chris Whitehead

[BrockMeaux]

Great game for the Lady Cajuns and great experience for the future. That game will hurt our RPI though as Southern Miss, the same team that took us to 11 innings, lost to a horrible Mississippi Valley State team earlier today. I may be wrong but we need to get wins over better teams than southern miss in order to get respect.

They're not exactly the best team on our schedule. And we beat them, so that's what matters.

[derf]

Great game for the Lady Cajuns and great experience for the future. That game will hurt our RPI though as Southern Miss, the same team that took us to 11 innings, lost to a horrible Mississippi Valley State team earlier today. I may be wrong but we need to get wins over better teams than southern miss in order to get respect.

It only hurts the RPI if you lose to them, which we did not. And I think you are missing the forest for the trees. This team had problems last year when they ran into any sort of opposition. Southern Miss came in with a great game plan for their pitching staff (keep it low and slow) and exacuted it to a T. However, our ladies didn't lose focus and won one in grind it out fashion. This win was more impressive from a maturity standpoint than yoou give credit for. The pitching was stout all weekend, and the pitching and defense was clutch in several moments where either or both would have/could have folded last spring. These young ladies put on nothing less than a great show for the home fans. Not every win should or can come by run rule.

~I'm gonna miss left field

[Cajun90]

It only hurts the RPI if you lose to them, which we did not.

Actually that is not true. The RPI is a statistical composite of your opponent and your opponents opponents records. I am unsure of the bonuses used in softball but they probably mimic baseball and give bonuses penalties based on "bad losses/ good wins". You don't even have to play a game for your RPI to change. Losing certainly can have negative effects on your RPI but winning doesn't necessarily bring it up. Example: It is possible and even likely that if your a cellar dweller and your RPI is higher than say 150 and you play one game and lose against RPI ranked #1 team that your RPI will actually go up. Bottom line is that a bad team losing to a good team can actually help bad teams RPI. The reverse is also true. A good teams win against a bottom dwelling team could hurt your rating.

And don't even bother looking at the RPI until sometime in mid April. Anything prior to that typically does not contain enough data sets.

[derf]

Thanks for the breakdown, but I know how it works. The point I was making is that IT'S A WIN. A loss would have really hurt us, but the fact is we didn't lose. We are 8 games into the fricken season and chicken little is already yelling about the sky. Southern miss did lose to MSVS, but it was buy 1 or 2 runs and and it ended on a suspect interference call at second by that crack officiating crew we had this weekend. Trust me USM will get a few quality wins before the season is done and our RPI will be just fine. We just need to worry about us and stop with the week one hysterics.