Carli Cutler goes in for a catch to strike out Boston College’s batter in Tuesday’s game at UConn. The Huskies won with a score of 3-2. (Tyler Benton/The Daily Campus)
After being swept by Houston this past weekend, UConn softball hoped to carry a strengthened offense into their midweek game against Boston College. The Huskies bounced back with a 3-2 win Tuesday.
This past weekend, the Huskies were outscored 34-4 in three games. The third game ended in the fifth inning after a whopping 22-0 defeat in which UConn played all five of their pitchers, including Katie Koshes who started and closed the game.
“We clearly had a tough weekend,” head coach Jen McIntyre said. “Yesterday we had what is probably one of the best practices we’ve had all year. Their focus was incredible. That’s what I told them during the postgame, the difference in this ballgame was how we practiced yesterday. It was a chance to hit the reset button. We acknowledged the things we had to clean up, and we focused in and got better.”
Among the challenges the series against Houston held, the pitching staff struggled more than they have all season. In the third game, Carli Cutler and Chelsea Eckert failed to record an out. The pitching staff gave up 22 runs, and 21 were earned.
“(Stockley) threw well against (BC) last year so she had a lot of confidence going in, she also pitched against them in the fall and her change of speeds with them just seemed to be a really good matchup for us,” McIntrye said. “I was hoping that Jill would go the whole game so that we can give her the confidence she needs and so we can rest our pitching staff.”
The team also committed five errors on the weekend, in addition to a run-scoring throwing error committed on Tuesday.
“I think that walks, errors and hit batters are all part of the game. What matters is what you do with the batter that comes after that,” McIntyre explained. “We clearly have a really young defense, and they continue to keep making mistakes and we continue to work on that, and once we clean up a couple of those things we’re going to be ready to take off.”
Rachel Schaefer is a campus correspondent for The Daily Campus. She can be reached via email at rachel.schaefer@uconn.edu.