The Cardinals softball team suffered two defeats against the Fighting Illini Tuesday. The Cardinals (14-16, 6-4 Mid-American Conference) dropped the first of two games against Illinois, 8-1, before rallying in the second game, only to lose again, 4-3.
After getting a three-game series sweep against Eastern Michigan over the weekend when it mattered most, the softball team traveled to Champaign, Ill. to try to keep their momentum going. But just when the team was riding high, the Fighting Illini knocked them back down.
The sweep by Illinois marked the second consecutive Tuesday that the Cardinals were beaten in both games of a doubleheader by a Big Ten Conference opponent. (Purdue did the honors last week.) Head coach Terri Laux said that the team needs to focus as much on the mid-week games as they do on the weekend contests.
"We have to learn how to play during the week and use these games as stepping stones to the weekend games," Laux said. "We get so fired up for the weekends but we've gotten swept the last two Tuesdays. That needs to change because we've got MAC teams coming up next week."
The first game started out well, with sophomore Kris Burdine's second home run of the season putting the Cardinals ahead 1-0. But the wheels came off as the game progressed, with Illinois mashing out 12 hits, 10 off of starter Randi Freese, and capitalizing on a shaky Ball State defense that committed four errors.
"In the first game we didn't play well at all," Laux said. "Defensive mistakes killed us, and we had a lot of mental mistakes. We also didn't adjust to their pitching very well."
The Cardinal defense settled down in the second game, with junior shortstop Katie Shea continuing her hot hitting. Shea went 3-4 and helped the Cardinals out-hit Illinois in the second game, 9-6, as well as gain a 2-0 advantage in the first inning. But the pitching of Illinois's Abby Lovejoy kept the Cardinals off balance the rest of the game while her teammates scored all four runs off of Ball State starter Cortney Winger. Both Winger and Freese's season records fell to 6-7.
"The first game was hard to take coming off of such a good weekend," Laux said. "The positive thing was that we came back and played better in the second game but it was still a letdown. To throw a team out there and not know who they are was a disappointment."
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