The No. 21 Oregon women’s softball team will take its 11-game winning streak up the road to Corvallis to face the Oregon State Beavers in the opening round of Pacific-10 Conference play Thursday afternoon.
Oregon has won 18 of its last 19 outings, but will now face one of the most challenging conference schedules in the country.
“We’re definitely heading into the harder part of our season right now,” first-year head coach Mike White said. “But we’re doing a lot of small things right. We’ve had really good pitching the last 11 games so it’s been hard for teams to beat us that way.”
The Ducks (24-5) are currently one of seven Pac-10 teams sitting in the top 25 nationally. No. 1 Washington (28-2), No. 2 Arizona (28-3), No. 5 UCLA (26-4), No. 10 Arizona State (31-4), No. 11 Stanford (25-5), and No. 14 California (28-6) each sit ahead of Oregon in the conference standings, while Oregon State (19-14) is the only unranked team in the Pac-10.
Oregon picked up four wins last weekend, defeating Seattle and Idaho State in a pair of doubleheaders. The Ducks clobbered Idaho State 19-0 the first outing and responded with a 13-0 win to close out the day. For the weekend, Oregon outscored its opponents 41-3, coming as no surprise considering the squad boasts the second-best ERA (1.16) in the country.
Freshman Jessica Moore has continued to shine on the mound, compiling a 10-2 record in her 17 appearances this season. Moore has throw seven complete games — four shutouts — and ranks 24th nationally with 10 strikeouts per seven innings. During Oregon’s second win over Idaho State she tallied the eighth-best mark in school history with 11 strikeouts en route to Oregon’s five-inning perfect game.
“Nothing’s really changed,” Moore said. “I’m not really doing anything different, just working really hard and I was just more successful I guess this past week than I have been lately.”
Her 3-0 record and .082 opposing batting average last week earned her Pac-10 Pitcher of the Week honors. With 22 games remaining on the regular season schedule, Moore already sits in ninth place all-time in Oregon history for single-season strikeouts.
“Every time I’ve thought she was going to struggle a little bit, she comes out and refocuses and gets right back into it,” White said.
Relievers and occasional starters Brittany Rumfelt and Mikayla Endicott still stand perfect with 5-0 and 2-0 records, respectively. The advantage with having such a deep staff, White said, is that it gives him several different options in a tight situation.
“I think all of us kind of look back at some of the games that we’ve thrown and each of us have thrown really good games,” Moore continued. “I’m just really proud that all of us have done well and it’s not just a couple of us. It’s going to take all four of us to get through Pac-10.”
Oregon will need its entire staff to pitch well to begin the Pac-10 season as the Beavers are coming off a strong weekend of their own.
Similar to the Ducks, Oregon State picked up four wins over Seattle and Idaho State last week, but also added on two shutout victories over Portland State this past Sunday. With those six consecutive wins, Oregon State has now won eight of its last nine games and will look to keep that streak alive as it plays its first nine Pac-10 games at home.
OSU freshman Lea Cavestany has paced the Beavers offensively with a .410 batting average and has scored 29 runs and cracked 43 hits. Junior Audrey Roderfeld provides the majority of the power to the Oregon State lineup, smacking 10 home runs with 36 RBIs.
Oregon lost the season series with its in-state rival last year with Oregon State picking up two of the three wins. Game time is set for 3 p.m. today and Friday, with a noon start time on Saturday afternoon.
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No piece of cake
Daily Emerald
March 31, 2010
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