For two days, the LSU softball team could do no wrong against South Carolina, but on the final day of the weekend series, the wheels fell off for the No. 13 Tigers.
On a bright Sunday afternoon at Tiger Park, LSU couldn’t manage to get things rolling after a slow start offensively — the overarching trend of the weekend — which resulted in a 4-1 loss to the Gamecocks.
The Tigers managed to win their second home series in as many weeks despite the Sunday loss, outscoring the Gamecocks 11-4 through all three games.
“South Carolina came out, and you could tell right off the bat they did not want to be swept,” said freshman catcher Kellsi Kloss. “They got that run in the first inning, and normally we can come back from that — we can tell ourselves it’s not a big deal, but we just took a little too long to score. … We felt defeated.”
Kloss attributed some of the Tigers’ problems in Sunday’s game to the mentality that they had already won the series and didn’t go in as prepared as they should have.
Slow starts and mid-game adjustments were constants for LSU coach Beth Torina and her team this weekend.
The Tigers failed to score a single run before the fourth inning of all three games but scored all 11 runs of the weekend in the fourth and fifth innings.
“That’s part of the game,” Torina said after the team’s Saturday night game. “You’re learning information about the pitcher in your first at-bat, and things get better as you go. That’s typical that people score late in games in both baseball and softball. I think that’s pretty common.”
The spark LSU couldn’t seem to find Sunday was the fourth-inning home runs it produced on Friday and Saturday.
In the opening game of the series, sophomore Rikki Alcaraz launched a ball over the Tiger Park fence, pushing freshman Bianka Bell across home plate. The run eventually became the game winner as LSU senior pitcher Rachele Fico recorded her eighth shutout of the season.
On Saturday, Bell and junior third baseman Tammy Wray battled it out for the team’s home run leader title when Wray launched two bombs in as many innings and Bell had a four-bagger herself. The two ended the weekend tied for the team lead with six apiece.
The typically stellar All-American Fico surrendered seven hits for four runs Sunday, which resulted in her fourth loss of the season.
“She’ll be fine,” Torina said. “She doesn’t have to be perfect every time she takes the field. I know we expect her to be, but she doesn’t have to be. We’re capable of scoring enough runs to help her on a day where she doesn’t have her best stuff. We just didn’t do it today.”
LSU takes on Southeastern-Louisiana on Tuesday and Southern Alabama on Wednesday.
