Softball Begins Non-Conference Schedule

For most students at Buffalo, February means that there is still at least one more month of snow, wind, and freezing temperatures. For the softball team, February means it's time to play ball.

The Bulls (2-3) have spent the winter months working on hitting, fielding, and pitching fundamentals in the cold Buffalo climate. But, this weekend they traveled to Jacksonville, Fla., and finally escaped the cold weather.

The Bulls got off to a strong start, beginning the weekend with a win over St. Louis (4-2) but could not maintain the momentum through the weekend, winning only one more game the rest of the tournament.

Buffalo dropped the second contest to host Jacksonville (6-2), and the final two games of the weekend to St. Louis and Virginia Tech, 8-1, and 6-0 respectively. The lone other win of the weekend came against North Carolina Greensboro, 6-3.

Although the Bulls record was not stellar, their performance encouraged head coach Jennifer Teague.

"We saw a lot of really good things coming out of this weekend," Teague said. "We saw a lot of promise offensively, and we struggled a little bit defensively in our last two games but our pitchers worked well. The games that we did lose they only had two or three bad pitches but those are things that we will get cleaned up in these next couple of weeks and then next month, getting ready to go into conference [play]."

Teague did not expect a certain number of wins from her team, but simply wanted it to be competitive against some teams that come from warmer climates who have had more time to practice during the winter months; the Bulls did just that.

The Bulls were close in every game, and even though they did not score a lot of runs in their last two games, the Bulls continued to hit the ball hard, albeit right at the opposing team.

Junior outfielder Caitlin Dekker and sophomore outfielder Holly Luciano led the Bulls with outstanding offensive performances. Dekker drove in six runs for the Bulls while hitting over .300 on the weekend. Luciano drove in two runs, scored 4 and hit over .460.

The Bulls are a young team that is finally starting to mature. With only three seniors this year, they are playing a lot of young players.

Luciano was a member of the All-Mid-American Conference freshmen team last year and Teague expects her to be one of the conference's best players this year. Teague also expects freshman catcher Alexis Curtiss to be a big contributor on the team this year. Although she didn't have a great statistical performance in her collegiate debut, Teague said she started to look comfortable toward the end of the weekend.

The Bulls will play a stretch of non-conference games from now until the end of March to get ready for conference play.

"We really want to prepare for our conference and I think that we are well on our way to doing that," Teague said. "[We are] just making sure that they are mentally ready to get into our conference play, [and] that physically we are healthy. We have a couple of nagging injuries right now but we are just trying to progress through those and try to make sure that we get a good product out [there] when Eastern and Central Michigan come to our place."

The Bulls have two practice days this week to work on improving their fundamentals. It is on practice days that Teague will push her team to perfect the basics that will lead to a successful season.

Buffalo heads to Georgia next weekend for another five-game early season tournament.

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