Auburn softball entered the month of March on top of the world. Eleven straight wins improved the Tigers record to 16-1 and saw the ladies rise all the way to No. 7 in the NCAA RPI.
Since then the Tigers have lost 10 games. In those 10 games:
- four of the losses were shutouts
- the Tigers allowed more than five runs in four of the losses
- the Tigers scored fewer than three runs in nine of the ten losses
Now 1-8 in conference play and 19-11 overall, the Tigers look to turn things around against a 25-9 Texas A&M squad on the road.
They’ll have to find a spark offensively to escape College Station with a series victory. As of right now Makenna Dowell (junior) and Tyler King (senior) are the only two Auburn starters with batting averages over .300, meanwhile Texas A&M has five. The Tigers will most likely face off against Makinzy Herzog, Grace Uribe, and Kayla Poynter on the mound all of which have produced a combined 165 strikeouts for the Aggies.
Despite getting swept, the Aggies put up 16 total runs against No. 4 Alabama last weekend. Head coach Mickey Dean acknowledged their hot bats and emphasized, “it’s important we pitch smart, play good defense and score early. I think if we score early, we will kind of relax a little bit.”
Defensively Auburn will likely start freshman Shelby Lowe (0.88 ERA, 0.84 WHIP, 118 SO), freshman Maddie Penta (2.64 ERA, 1.25 WHIP, 76 SO), and sophomore KK Dismukes (1.30 ERA, 1.18 WHIP, 32 SO) on the mound.
Auburn head coach Mickey Dean recently detailed how he and this team are working together on making improvements:
“Before you can ever experience success, you are going to experience failure. You hope it doesn’t happen as a group, but sometimes it does. It’s not a physical battle. It’s a mental battle. As a coach, you can focus on the negative or focus on the positive. There has to be a mixture. If players are going to play well, they have to feel about what they are doing. If they don’t feel good about what they are doing, they’re not going to play well. A lot of that is what you say to them. You still want them to be positive going into a game even when they have things to work on.”
The Tigers’ series opener against Texas A&M begins at 6 p.m. CST Friday on SEC Network Plus.