Nicholls softball team makes home debut with Alcorn double-header

After opening the season by playing in a pair of out-of-town tournaments, the Nicholls softball team, with 11 games under its belt, finally gets to play at home when it hosts Alcorn State in a double-header starting at 2 p.m. Wednesday at Swanner Field at Geo Surfaces Park.

“You want to get to show off the product to the local fans,” Nicholls coach Justin Lewis said. “We seem to play pretty well here in our own park. It’s a bigger park, one of the biggest ones in the country, and when you have really good pitching, it makes it tough for other teams to win here.”

Following the Alcorn double-header, Nicholls will be back on the road when the Lady Colonels take part in the Dugout Club Classic in Tallahassee, Fla., Friday-Sunday.

Nicholls (6-5) is coming off the Houston Classic in which it won two games and lost three.

The Lady Colonels lost twice to Houston and suffered a dramatic 2-1 loss to UMass in which Nicholls led 1-0 going into the bottom of the seventh.

The second loss to Houston came in an 11-3 defeat in which Nicholls committed three errors, leading to five unearned runs.

“When we play clean, we’ve got a chance, when we don’t it makes it hard. That’s not just us. That is pretty much the story of the game. It’s been our Achilles heel, for sure,” Lewis said.

An example of how costly the errors were for Nicholls was Audrey McNeill, working in place of starter Molly Yoo, allowed six runs, only one of which was earned, in 1/3 of an inning.

“We brought her in that second Houston game when it still was kind of close. The wheels kind of fell off there and I pulled her out not because she was doing bad – our defense was doing bad – she’s a drop-ball pitcher who gets a lot of ground balls and we were kicking around and throwing it around, but really took her out just to save her for the next day in case we needed her,” explained Lewis.

In the 2-1 loss to UMass, a wild pitch allowed the tying run in the bottom of the seventh to tie the game before Grace Cadden followed with a walk-off home run.

“That was a tough one because I felt like we should have hit their pitcher better. She was just throwing two pitches,” said Lewis. “I was a little disappointed with our hitters.

“The error that cost us the tying run, I wasn’t super excited about that. I don’t blame Audrey at all. She pitched a heck of a game. Our hitters got to take that loss.”

Nicholls picked up two wins with victories over Texas-San Antonio and UMass.

The 11-3 win over UMass came during Nicholls’ final game of the tournament on Sunday in which it scored eight runs in the first inning.

Nicholls’ first home date of the season comes against an Alcorn State team that is 4-5 on the season.

The Lady Braves are coming off a four-game split in the HBCU Invitational in Covington, Ga. Alcorn State won the first two games in the tournament, edging North Carolina Central 7-6, and topping North Carolina A&T 12-9. Alcorn dropped the final two games, falling to Maryland-Eastern Shore 7-3 and Howard University 10-0.

Nicholls is scheduled to face Florida International twice on Friday and Florida State twice on Saturday. The Lady Colonels will conclude play with a single game against Charleston Southern on Sunday.

Florida International is 6-5 on the season coming off hosting the Panther Invitational in Miami.

The Panthers went 3-1 in the tournament. FU opened with a 5-4 win over Army on Friday before losing 6-0 to ranked Duke. Florida International defeated Rutgers 4-3, then 8-2 in eight innings on Saturday. Another s scheduled game with Duke was cancelled due to inclement weather.

Florida State is 5-3 on the year coming off a 1-2 performance in the Shriners Children’s Clearwater Invitational in Clearwater, Fla.

The Seminoles defeated No. 9 Stanford 4-0 in its first game before falling to No. 20 UCLA 14-10 and No. 4 Georgia 20-10. A game against No. 2 Tennessee was cancelled to inclement weather.

Charleston Southern is 6-4 on the season coming off a 3-1 performance in hosting the CSU Blue/Gold Classic in Charleston, S.C.

The Buccaneers lost their opener 4-2 to St. John’s before winning their final three games with wins of 5-5 and 2-0 over UMass Lowell, before topping St. John’s 5-1 in eight innings on Sunday.

“Everybody’s going to have pitching that’s going to beat you,” Lewis said ahead of the Clearwater, Fla., event. “If you don’t show up or if you kick it around like we’ve been doing, then we’ll struggle, for sure. Hopefully, these preseason games you kind of work out all the kinks and get better and better and better. Hopefully, this trip we can clean up the defense a little bit and see where we stand from there.”