It all came to pinch-hitter's Katelyn Gunderson at-bat with two outs in the top of the seventh inning. Ball State University was seemingly desperate for her to get a hit, but as what happened to most of the Cardinals batters Tuesday, Gunderson grounded to the first-baseman to end the game.
However, the Ball State softball team (8-13, 2-2 Mid-American Conference) wasn't hoping for Gunderson to get a hit to score the game winning or tying run, but rather it was hoping for her to get the team's first hit of the entire game. The Cardinals were unable to obtain this elusive hit and were no-hit by Purdue University (19-21, 2-2 Big Ten) in a 7-0 loss.
"I think our offensive performance was absolutely horrible today," coach Terri Laux said. "We had no intensity during warm-up, we didn't come here ready to play and we entered the game offensively with a very defensive mindset."
Boilermaker pitchers Diana LaRiva, Melissa Burns and Brooke Barker held the Cardinals hitless through all seven innings of play as they combined for Purdue's first no-hitter of the season.
LaRiva pitched the first three innings of the game by striking out four Cardinal batters and allowing only one ball out of the infield.
In the fourth inning, Burns entered and struck out four out of the seven hitters she faced.
Baker came in and retired the side in order in the sixth and seventh innings.
The only two batters that reached base came from Purdue fielding errors in the third and fifth inning.
"I'm not happy at all with our performance," Laux said. "The Purdue pitching staff pitched well today but we made them look like All-American pitchers. It is all about the intangibles which we can't coach or tell [the players] to bring them and right now were not consistently bringing them."
One of the biggest problems for Ball State this season has been their offensive inconsistency as the Cardinals have scored only three or more runs in back-to-back games three times this year.
"I've been telling our players that very rarely do we have the same line-up out there because our line-up depends on players being consistent," Laux said. "Right now we don't know who will show up to play and that is really sorry at this time of the season. There will probably will be some more line-up changes for this weekend's games."
A possible change to the line-up this weekend may be the return of the Ball State's shortstop Amanda Pick. Pick, who currently leads the team with a .352 batting average, was absent Tuesday because of an injury she suffered after a ball struck her in the face with during the Cardinals game last Sunday against Ohio University.
"Pick is a huge part of our offensive attack and it is difficult to plug that hole with a younger player who doesn't have as much experience," Laux said. "That doesn't excuse the fact though that we were horrible offensively."
One of the few positives for the Cardinals in the game against Purdue was the performance of freshmen pitchers Laura Masch and Abby Zollerman.
Masch pitched two innings and allowed two earned runs, while Zollerman struck-out four batters and allowed one earned run in four innings of work.
"We were looking for them to pitch well and they did their job, but we just didn't help them out," Laux said. "Both players will probably be seeing more pitching time [as conference play] continues."
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