Softball team looks to break even against Billikens
March 27, 1996
DE Assistant Sports Editor
The SIUC women’s softball team is hoping for a repeat performance against St. Louis today.
With an aggressive attack of the bats, the Salukis (6-7) trounced the Billikens 13-3 during the Saluki Invitational Saturday, and will be looking for a similar outing at the plate in today’s doubleheader.
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St. Louis returns to Carbondale with a 3-18 record and a pitching staff that proved no match for Southern batters Saturday.
Against SIUC, St. Louis pitcher Jodi Everding gave up 11 hits in 5.2 innings of action, including an inside the park home run, three doubles and three triples.
However, Saluki coach Kay Brechtelsbauer is not taking the Billikens too lightly.
Brechtelsbauer, who puts no stock in a team’s record, said a team has to perform no matter what its opponents win-loss column says.
I’m sure they’ll be ready to come after us since we defeated them 13-3, she said. You can’t take them lightly. They’ve got some good ball players. They don’t have the pitching, but you still have to be able to hit and put the ball into play.
If we don’t go out there and do our job, they will.
During the tournament, Southern performed its job at the plate well, hitting .364 as a team and outscoring its competition 27-7.
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The top of Southern’s lineup has proven to be strong, with the first four batters hitting well over .300, including junior third baseman Becky Lis, this weeks Missouri Valley Conference Player of the Week.
Lis batted .556 during the tournament, scoring six runs and driving in three. All of her hits were for extra bases, including four doubles and a triple to compliment her 1.222 slugging percentage and .667 on-base percentage.
Lis said Southern has risen to a new level of confidence since its strong tournament outing.
Everybody’s confidence level is way up, she said. We’ve played some good solid ball, we’ve seen what we can do, and now it’s just being consistent and going out there and doing it.
Lis said it is extremely important not to let the teams revived motivation level slip today against the Billikens.
They know that we beat them before, and they’re not going to take us lightly, Lis said. We’re not going to lower our level of play since we beat them before. We need to be consistent and go hard from the first pitch to the last pitch.
In addition to its rejuvenated level of confidence, Lis said the atmosphere on the team has been more relaxed since the tournament.
Everybody has been tense and really wanting to do well, she said. When you are too tense you can’t perform well. Now we’ve learned to relax and play the kind of ball we know we can play.
Brechtelsbauer, who is pleased with the batting in the top of the lineup, said in order to stay consistently competitive, the bottom half of the lineup needs to contribute at the plate as well.
We need to get a little more offense out of that part of the lineup, she said. We moved that area around a little bit as to who is in what position, but they’ve gotten on base and have done some things.
It will come I’m not too concerned about it.
Despite not winning the tournament, Brechtelsbauer said the team remains pleased with how well they did do, especially against the University of Evansville.
Southern wrapped up the tournament by beating the Aces 8-0, once again with a dominating performance at the plate. Southern collected 13 hits in 24 at-bats against the Aces.
They feel very good about how they performed against Evansville, she said. They know that’s how you play the ball game. They just took the game to Evansville.
That’s what we have to do if we’re going to have a good season.
Today’s matchup with the Billikens marks Southern’s last game before the conference play begins. Evansville returns to Carbondale on Tuesday to begin league action.
Today’s first game against St. Louis begins at 3:00 at the IAW Fields north diamond.
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