CONFERENCE PLAY SET TO BEGIN
While non-conference play will continue in spots through the rest of the season, the spotlight will shift to the Big West schedule as league play begins this weekend. Defending champion Cal Poly is looking to make it three titles in the last four years as the Mustangs begin their journey at home against surprising UC Riverside.
Current league leader Long Beach State is also hosting a conference series this weekend as Pacific goes to 49er Softball Complex, while the league’s hottest team, Cal State Northridge, faces UC Davis at home. The final matchup involves two struggling clubs who are not used to tough times as UC Santa Barbara heads to Orange County to take on Cal State Fullerton.
WAIT...THEY’RE ALL CHEERING AGAINST US?!
Long Beach State has played plenty of difficult opponents so far in 2010, but a game last week presented a new challenge for the 49ers. The club played its first true road game of the season against UCLA last week, this coming after a league-high 21 games in neutral venues and eight outings at home. LBSU was the last team in the league to have played a true road game and is one of two teams in the Big West (Cal State Fullerton) to have not played at least four true road contests to this point in the season.
MATADORS HITTING CONFERENCE AT THE RIGHT TIME
Thanks to a doubleheader sweep over Utah last week, Cal State Northridge is at .500 for the first time this season. After opening up the 2010 campaign at 1-9, the Matadors are a league-best 15-7. Sitting just a game behind league-leader Long Beach State in the standings, the club is poised for its first Big West title run since 1998.
ST. GERMAIN STILL FILLING IT UP
Long Beach State freshman Nalani St. Germain has continued the hot start to her freshman campaign, showing no signs of hitting the wall going into conference play. She is batting .284 and leads the Big West in slugging percentage (.600), runs scored (30), total bases (57), walks (20) and home runs (8), while also ranking eighth in on-base percentage (.409), tied for sixth in hits (27), third in RBI (20) and tied for sixth in stolen bases (6). The torrid numbers have earned St. Germain a lot of respect from foes as UCLA walked her three times in four plate appearances last week.
MUSTANGS LOOK TO TURN IT AROUND
Cal Poly hasn’t been used to losing a lot of games in a row as the team’s current six-game losing skid is the longest since a six-game slide in 2006. The Mustangs’ 11-15 mark hasn’t come against patsies either as 11 of the team’s games have come against ranked opposition, tied for the second-most in the Big West.
IT ONLY SEEMS LIKE THEY’RE NOT LEAVING THE YARD
If you’ve gone to some Big West games this year, you might have noticed what seems like a drop off in home runs. In reality, the home run pace of 2010 is only slightly off from last season and several teams have upped their long range output. Big West have combined for 96 roundtrippers in 240 games, a rate of .40 per contest. A year ago, the 173 homers amassed by the conference programs in 417 games gave the league a .41 per game average. In addition, Cal State Northridge has already surpassed its home run total from last year (16 to 9), UC Riverside is two away from its 2009 total (14 to 16) and so is Pacific (8 to 10). Conversely, UC Santa Barbara has witnessed a power outage as the Gauchos have only seven homers after picking up 18 last year.
INNING-EATERS
Softball traditionally has pitchers that pick up a lot of innings and several starting hurlers in the Big West have been no different this year. UC Riverside’s Marissa Alvidrez leads the conference with 104.1 innings in the circle, while six other pitchers in the league have put up at least 90 innings of work. The most prolific inning-eating duo to this point has been UC Davis’ Alex Holmes and Dana Waldusky who have picked up 95.2 and 92.0 innings, respectively. As good as some of these pitchers might be, the Big West single-season innings record might be a touch out of reach. It’s held by Rhonda Wheatley of Cal Poly who pitched an incredible 354.1 innings back in 1987. In fact, she is one of four pitchers to have amassed 300+ innings in a single season. 10th place might even be difficult to attain on that list as former Pacific star Lisa Fresquez put up 285 in 1987.
THEY’RE USED TO TURNING IT AROUND
A pair of 2009 first team All-Big West selections have struggled to this point of the season, but they have both shown the ability to turn things around once the lights of conference play get lit up. Entering the week, Cal State Fullerton’s Ari Cerventes is 2-13 with a 5.73 ERA in 91.2 innings, while fellow stud starter Kristin Cobb is 2-7 with a 7.35 ERA in 46.2 innings. In Big West play a year ago, Cerventes won 11 games, posted a 1.68 ERA and struck out 47 batters in 96.0 innings. Meanwhile, Cobb won eight games, put up a 1.74 ERA and struck out 61 in 72.1 innings on her way to Big West Co-Freshman Pitcher of the Year honors.
NO MORE BOOTING IT AROUND
A year ago, Pacific was the worst fielding team in the Big West, committing a league-high 75 errors on the way to a conference-worst .951 fielding percentage. This season has been a stark turnaround as the Tigers have committed the fewest miscues in the league (23) and have the league’s top fielding percentage at .969, a number that also ranks 37th in the country.
THIEVERY AT A HIGH RATE
UC Riverside probably looked at its stolen base count from a year ago and decided that it needed to focus on its base-stealing in the offseason. Well...mission accomplished. The Highlanders lead the conference with 33 steals in 35 attempts, the most steals, best success rate and tied for the most attempts in the league. A year ago, UCR was next to last with 26 steals and was caught 12 times.
NEW (OLD) VOICE IN THE DUGOUT
Cal State Northridge has a new voice at the helm of the program as associate coach Roni Sparrey takes over. Sparrey is a veteran of Big West battles as she played and coached at Cal Poly before joining the CSUN coaching staff prior to the 2007 season. In her three seasons as an assistant with CSUN, the Matador defense has posted an average fielding percentage of .966 and has finished among the top fielding teams in the Big West Conference and Division I. Sparrey also helped the 2009 Matadors lead the Big West in stolen bases, finishing the year with 62 stolen bases. She has also overseen several Matadors receive All-Big West Conference honors, ranging from First Team awards to Conference Freshman of the Year honors.
ANOTHER SEASON, ANOTHER COACHING MILESTONE FOR GROMACKI
A year ago, Cal State Fullerton head coach Michelle Gromacki became just the fourth coach in league history to win 350+ overall games and 150+conference outings during Big West membership. This season, Gromacki might not only lead the Titans to its 1,000th win as a member of the conference, but the 11th-year coach is also just 28 wins from 400 for her career.