Ohio is traveling again for weekend tournament, as it'll play in the UNC Charlotte Tournament.
Ohio will travel for a second consecutive weekend to play in the First Pitch Classic in Charlotte, North Carolina.
The Bobcats returned to Athens after the Kennesaw State Tournament last weekend, losing the first two games and winning the final two.
Coach Jodi Hermanek, after last weekend’s tournament, said her team was looking to get more contact after dropping the first two games. Ohio (2-2) met that goal totaling 21 hits compared to the 10 in its two losses.
{{tncms-asset app="editorial" id="7e3e69de-b00a-11e4-8975-1faed3b4499e"}}
Friday morning, the first game of the day for the Bobcats, will be against Quinnipiac.
Quinnipiac, who also go by the Bobcats, finished the 2014 season with an overall 11-36 record and a poor 2-17 record on neutral fields.
If Ohio can manage to produce the kind of contact and offense it did in its two wins, then it should be in pretty good shape for Quinnipiac, which the team also plays in final game of the tournament on Saturday.
Friday, at noon, the Bobcats play the hosting team, UNC-Charlotte (1-1).
One player Ohio needs to pay attention to if she pitches is senior Lexi Betancourt. Last season, she finished with a 2.20 earned run average and struck out a career-high 211 batters.
Betancourt was 49th on the list of Fastpitch News’ top 50 NCAA softball pitchers.
The next game Ohio plays will be against Army on Saturday morning.
Although the Black Knights (2-3) finished with a losing record of 23-28 last year, they have three returning players that hit a batting average above .300.
One of those players is junior Kasey McCravey. Last season she finished hitting .388 with 44 runs batted in.
{{tncms-asset app="editorial" id="25825d56-ad8e-11e4-be41-fbbdb0ed1e2a"}}
Ohio will face its Bobcat counterpart Quinnipiac again for its final game of the weekend.
So far this season, Ohio has seen a good amount of production out of junior Sloan Walker. Walker holds the highest batting average for the Bobcats at .500 and has a solid .533 on-base percentage.
With contact being the biggest issue last weekend, the Bobcats would like for junior Amanda Dalton to recreate her 3-4 performance in their 10-2 victory over Northern Kentucky. Dalton has also been offensively consistent in the first four games of the season, hitting .429.
From the defensive side, Ohio needs junior pitcher Savannah Jo Dorsey to continue being consistent. Even though her 3.50 ERA is slightly above average, she is holding opposing batters to a batting average of .205 and she has also struck out 16 batters.
After ending strong at the previous tournament, Hermanek said that they really found their identity as a team. She said that her team really struggled with contact at first but after walking off against Tennessee Tech and beating Northern Kentucky, they have started to hit their stride.
“The last two games we really showed our identity as a team,” Hermanek said last weekend. “Each hitter had a game plan.”
@jordanbrandall
jr096012@ohio.edu
