Tuesday in practice the softball team worked on hitting the types of pitches they would see from Kent State's Brittney Robinson, and head coach Terri Laux said they hit them well.
Wednesday was a different story, however, as Robinson struck out a career-high 14 batters and shut out Ball State, 1-0.
"She threw well, but it was our inability to adjust," Laux said of Robinson. "We couldn't adjust from practice to what was going on here."
The teams were scheduled to play a doubleheader, but the second game was suspended because of weather and will not be made up.
The Cardinals put some runners on base early in the game, but 15 of the last 16 batters were unable to reach base. In the third through fifth innings, Robinson struck out seven of nine batters.
Ball State (15-30, 2-9 Mid-American Conference) came closest to getting a run in the sixth inning when Alyssa Huffman led off with a base hit. Cortney Patteson advanced her on a sacrifice bunt, but Robinson then struck out Kelli Jeziorski, and Amanda Pick grounded out to end the inning.
This past weekend, the team recorded 11 hits in a 5-1 win over top MAC team Central Michigan. Laux said she wasn't sure how how the change happened.
"I have no idea," she said. "That's why maybe we're not a very good team, because we can't make those adjustments consistently."
Senior Amy Brownfield was on the mound for the Cardinals and allowed only two hits. Kent State's Jessica Toocheck hit a triple in the fourth inning and later scored on a wild pitch.
"It's unfortunate, she's been on a lot of losing ends of a lot of games like that where she doesn't give up a lot of hits," Laux said of Brownfield, whose record fell to 6-8. "She made one mistake. The kid rocked her for a triple.
"Give her credit, because she gets out there and she performs irregardless of whether we're winning."
In the Cardinals' second game, they scored two runs in the first but then allowed three in the third. Consecutive base hits in the third by Sarah McGregor and Patteson prompted Kent State (20-20, 8-6) to take out Keir McEachern and put Robinson in. McGregor was still able to score and tie the game.
Kent State scored a go-ahead run in the fourth, then lighting caused a 45-minute delay in the bottom of the inning. When the teams returned, Robinson struck out two batters and forced another to ground out. In the fifth Megan Verde's home run put Kent State ahead 5-3. However, lighting and then rain caused the game to be suspended. Under NCAA rules none of the statistics count.
Laux said the team's low intensity level is what frustrated her most.
"If we play the same way we did over the weekend [against Central] there's not a team in the MAC that can beat us," she said. "We pick and choose when we decide to play like that and to me that's probably the most frustrating thing."
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