Nicholls softball team goes into home series against Commerce with pitching back on track

A three-game series at Lamar seemed to get the pitching staff of the Nicholls softball team back on track.

Nicholls won two of the three games in the series, allowing no more than two runs in any of the games against the Cardinals. The Lady Colonels won the opener 4-1 in 13 innings and took the second game 3-2. Nicholls was blanked in the finale 2-0.

“If you look at our conference only stats right now, we’re number one in the in the league in pitching. You can’t ask for any more than that,” Nicholls coach Justin Lewis said. “Unfortunately, we’re second to last and hitting. We need constant adjustments on some things. We need to get our bats healthy in a hurry.

“Especially with these young people, their mental state is always really, really important. I think they’ve just gotten to a place where they’re really in a good spot mentally. It’s usually very rarely a physical thing at this level. It’s more of a mental thing. I think our pitchers are just in a really good spot mentally.”

Nicholls (19-16, 4-2 in the Southland) leads the conference in pitching with a 1.34 earned run average. The Lady Colonels are eighth in hitting with a .224 team batting average.

Nicholls takes on Southern Mississippi at 6 p.m. Wednesday in Hattiesburg. It is the second game between the teams in 13 days.

In the earlier game in Thibodaux, Nicholls won 7-6 in dramatic fashion on a walk-off home run by Mckenzine Champagne in the ninth inning.

“I’m guessing they’re going to be a little amped up to be at home and looking for a little payback. We have to understand that and understand that the energy that’s going to be coming our way, and we have to be ready for it,” said Lewis.

Nicholls will host a struggling Texas A&M-Commerce team.

The Lions are coming off being swept by the University of Incarnate Word in a three-game series. Commerce lost 10-0 and 9-1 in the first two games that both went only five innings due to the run-rule. The Lions lost the finale 9-8 in 12 innings to fall to 0-12 in Southland play and 6-33 overall.

“Last year, we lost the game to Commerce. They have a couple of arms over there that if you don’t show up ready to play and think you’re just gonna roll through them, they will beat you,” Lewis said. “They proved it last year against us. I’m hoping we learned our lesson last year. It’s one of these series that are nerve wracking as coaches because obviously we should win all three. We feel like we should win them handily, but the kids have got to show up and not just go through the motions.”

Nicholls and Commerce are scheduled to play a double-header on Friday beginning at 4 p.m. The series finale is slated for noon Saturday.

The Lions hosts Texas-Arlington on Tuesday before beginning their series at Nicholls.

Commerce is hitting only .207 as a team.

Tehya Pitts is the only player on the team hitting above .300 with an average of .308. She leads the team in stolen bases with 16 steals in 18 attempts.

Texas A&M-Commerce has hit only seven home runs as a team. Charli Anger, with a .198 batting average, leads the team with three home runs.

Three Lions pitchers have tossed 54 innings or more.

Julia Sanchez (3-8) has an earned run average of 5.43, allowing 61 runs on 106 hits and 23 walks, while striking out 47 in 78 2/3 innings.

Anissa Arredondo (0-5) has a 6.32 ERA, allowing 53 runs on 95 hits and 27 walks, while striking out 35.

Maddie Muller (3-13) has tossed 54 innings with an 8.03 ERA, allowing 62 runs on 82 hits and 38 walks, while striking out

29.

Like most coaches when their squads are taking on a team they are superior to on paper, the focus, said Lewis, needed to be on what Nicholls can do and not Texas A&M-Commerce.

“I don’t feel that anybody has just flat out beat us this year. I pretty much tell them we’ve beaten ourselves, either we didn’t show up or we made errors. We haven’t even put a complete game together,” the Nicholls coach said. “I guess we did against FIU the double-header down in Florida we played pretty well. That was against a team that was equal competition, and we played at a real high level, but that’s been it.

“It’s pretty disappointing, but it’s also encouraging that we’re sitting in a good spot in the conference, and we haven’t really played very well yet. We’ve been pitching it, and we haven’t hit it, or we’ve hit it and scored some runs but then we didn’t pitch it real well. So I’m excited to see if we can get in these last 20-some odd games and start putting it all together.”