DE Assistant Sports Editor

Hitting, as the SIUC women’s softball team demonstrated Saturday, wins ballgames.

Backed by solid hitting, SIUC rocked St. Louis University 13-3 and blanked the University of Evansville 8-0 Saturday, en route to a second place finish in the 16th annual Saluki Invitational at the IAW Fields.

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The Salukis combined strong pitching with solid hitting in both games to improve its record to 6-7, as well as boost its confidence level a notch.

Southern’s improved performance was especially appealing to Saluki coach Kay Brectelsbauer, who collected her 500th career win against the University of Loyola-Chicago Friday.

Brechtelsbauer said the Salukis attacked the field in a confident matter Saturday something the team has failed to do on a consistent basis thus far.

If you hit enough balls hard, enough of them will drop in to win ballgames, Brechtelsbauer said. We came out and attacked, and that’s something we have to do every game.

We showed some confidence and everybody got up there and swung the bats extremely well.

Cold temperatures failed to cool Southern’s bats as players from the top of the lineup to the bottom contributed to SIUC’s offensive attack.

Complimenting a strong outing from Saluki pitcher Jamie Schuttek, Southern continuously pounded Evansville’s pitchers from beginning to end. Schuttek, who collected her fourth win of the season, pitched five solid innings, allowing only one hit and three walks, while Southern batters collected 13 hits off of four Evansville hurlers, including a double and a triple from junior third baseman Becky Lis.

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Although Southern failed to walk away with the tournament title, which went home with the University of Northern Iowa following a 4-0 tournament record, Saturday’s performance against Evansville gave Brechtelsbauer a good indication of how the team is improving.

With conference action about to begin, that’s a good thing to know.

There’s some good things that are happening, and we’re headed in the right direction there’s no doubt in my mind, she said. We played very well all the way through in every phase of the game.

I think they (players) are still learning what it takes to win. If we can start putting these performances together back to back, maybe they will get a sense of what it takes every time out.

So far, it has been an up and down season for this year’s young Saluki squad both defensively and offensively and the tournament proved no different.

Southern opened the tournament Friday by beating the University of Loyola-Chicago 6-1, then fell to Northern Iowa 3-0 in its second game. Southern batters collected 11 hits against Loyola, but gathered only four against the Panthers, while leaving six runners stranded.

However, Lis said Southern’s slow beginning and sluggish style of play is a thing of the past.

All of it’s coming together, she said. We’ve had problems, now everybody is slowly getting their confidence, personal wise, and the team’s coming together.

Everybody is doing their job and we’re starting to gel and come together. I have all the confidence in the world in our batting.

Lis said the team treated Friday’s loss to Northern Iowa as a learning experience rather than a loss.

Granted, we would feel better going 4-0 in the tournament, but it was a learning experience, Lis said. We knew what we didn’t do against Northern Iowa, but we came back out and figured out what we needed to do.

Senior second baseman Jami Koss, who collected an inside the park home run against St. Louis, said Saturday’s victories are just what the team needs to build its confidence level.

This is exactly what we wanted out of this team, an elated Koss said. We did a really good job, and both games were great wins. We have a lot of things to work on still, but this is a good ending.

We wanted to dominate today (Saturday) and come off the tournament with a good feeling.

Southern will host St. Louis again Wednesday in a double header at IAW Fields beginning at 3:00.

Brechtelsbauer said she hopes Southern will continue to attack opposing teams in the same manner it did Saturday, St. Louis being no exception.

This has to be a regular kind of feeling when you go out there and just have that confidence and attack the ball, she said. It takes effort and its a mental thing more than a physical thing.

It’s a feeling they have to learn.