IOWA CITY, Iowa — Before the Big Ten softball tournament, Northwestern coach Sharon Drysdale said she thought her team might have the best clutch hitters in the conference.
Unfortunately for the Wildcats, their performance in the tournament didn’t support the coach’s claim. For a team that scored 20 more runs than any other team in the Big Ten regular season, NU’s offensive attack fell shockingly silent.
NU (28-24, 14-8 Big Ten) won its second game of the tournament 2-1 over Purdue Friday morning. But the Cats couldn’t hold elimination off for more than one game and dropped Friday’s second game 3-1 to Penn State.
The losses didn’t hurt though, as NU received a bid to the NCAA tournament Sunday. In the first game of the double-elimination tournament, the Cats will play Oregon State Thursday in Norman, Okla.
During the season, NU averaged nearly five runs a game. In the tournament, the Cats also scored five runs — in four games. NU traveled to Iowa as the fourth seed, and came out as a fourth-place finisher, but the lack of production likely cost it a shot to finish much higher.
“Our offense has shown that it can produce a ridiculous amount of runs,” sophomore outfielder Erin Jancic said. “But in the tournament, everybody’s throwing their best pitcher and everybody has you scouted. It’s just a matter of getting the timely hits and getting the breaks. It’s something that we could have had more of this weekend.”
The Cats played solidly in both games, thanks in particular to the pitching of freshmen Brie Brown and Lauren Schwendimann. But no matter how good the Cats were at stopping the opposition, they were just as good at stopping themselves.
Perhaps the most telling statistic of the weekend came from the Cats’ inability to drive runners home when they had opportunities. In fact, NU was a dismal 3-for-30 at the plate with runners in scoring position on the weekend — 1-for-9 in the loss to Penn State (37-17, 15-7).
“We didn’t get timely hitting,” senior Tami Jones said. “Those are probably the key words for us this weekend. And couple that with some great plays on defense by our opponents, and you come up with a couple losses.”
Against Purdue (33-28, 6-12), the Cats looked as though they were rebounding nicely from their loss Thursday night to Iowa (44-13, 16-5). After getting an early run on the board, Schwendimann held the Boilermakers at bay for much of the game.
But with only one out left for the NU victory, Purdue put the tying run at third and the winning run at second. And with Purdue’s star hitter Jessica Jones at the plate, things looked a little iffy for NU.
Drysdale went to the mound to give Schwendimann the option of walking Jones, but the team’s ace hurler opted to pitch to her — and one strikeout later, the game was over.
“I thought she made the right decision to go after that batter,” Drysdale said. “In a situation like that you’re giving the ball to the pitcher. You’re putting the pressure on them. At that point, they have to be comfortable.”
However, Penn State put an end to any Big Ten championship dreams for NU. And Tanis Ambelang, who had shut out NU in the regular season, nearly duplicated the feat Friday.
After the Cats squandered an opportunity to score in the top of the first, Penn State put a run on the board in the bottom of the inning — and the Lions never relinquished the lead.
“Once we get a run on the board, we definitely relax,” Penn State coach Robin Petrini said. “We know we can score on the opponent, and once we know we can score on them, it opens up a whole new world for us.”
The bottom line for NU was that it had opportunities, but simply didn’t capitalize on them.
“We normally get a few hits and score quite a few runs. We get our leadoff runners on. We get our (Nos.) 1 and 2 hitters on,” Drysdale said. “It was kind of a different script than we’ve been following.”
