BYU Softball: Cougars face tough Drake team in first NCAA Tournament game
By Shaun Gordon
It’s tournament time for BYU Softball, and they’ll have to find a way to score runs against a tough Drake team if they want to win their first game.
There’s an old question that’s applicable in a lot of situations: Who would win, an unstoppable force or an immovable object?
BYU Softball may answer that question in their first game of the NCAA Tournament today against No. 29 Drake.
In this case, it’s BYU’s unstoppable run production against Drake’s immovable run defense.
The two teams are a part of the Oregon Regional, and they square off against each other at 4pm MDT in Eugene. It’s a four-team double-elimination tournament, so the winner moves on to take on the winner of No. 1 Oregon vs. Albany on Friday. The losers square off against each other on Friday too.
That’s quite the reward for winning, having to take on the No. 1 overall seed in the NCAA Tournament.
But if the Cougars want to take on the Ducks in their second game, they’ll have to get past the Bulldogs in their first one.
Drake won the Missouri Valley Conference, finishing with a 43-10 record overall and 24-1 in MVC play. They win games with elite pitching and elite defense.
The Bulldogs have a 1.19 team ERA, which is third best in the Country. They’re led by Nicole Newman, who won 21 games this year, posting a 0.62 ERA and striking out 238 batters.
They just flat out don’t give up runs.
BYU scores runs, though. In their last 20 games, the Cougars are averaging 7.1 runs per game, which would be the best in the nation if it stretched over the entire season. BYU is hitting the ball well, and they’re riding a 10-game winning streak into the tournament.
Can they score runs off of the Bulldogs, though?
That’s the question.
If they can, they stand a good chance of winning. Drake doesn’t score a lot of runs. They only average a little more than four runs per game, and BYU is no slouch defensively.
The game against Drake is being streamed live online by ESPN. If the Cougars win, they’ll take on the Oregon/Albany winner at 4pm MDT on Friday. If they lose, they’ll play at 6:30pm MDT on Friday instead.