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A weekend series with the University of Albany produced two extremes for the University of Maine softball team. On Friday, the weather was as cold as the Black Bears’ bats, while on Saturday, the sun shone bright and UMaine picked up a win.
UMaine’s offense thawed out enough in game one Saturday to take a 3-0 victory over the visiting Great Danes.
Freshman Brittany Cheney single-handedly put the Black Bears on the board in the first inning. After she looped a two-out triple over the head of the retreating right fielder, Cheney galloped home on a wild pitch uncorked by Albany’s starting pitcher, Danielle Buyea.
The 1-0 score held until the bottom of the third inning, when a sacrifice fly by UMaine’s starting pitcher Jenna Merchant scored Cheney, who scored all three runs for the Black Bears in game one.
Merchant helped her own cause again in the fifth inning by driving in Cheney with an RBI single to right field.
Merchant was phenomenal on the mound as well. She picked up her eighth win on seven innings of three-hit ball.
“Jenna pitched quite well in the first game, and we really needed that from her,” UMaine coach Deb Smith said.
In game two the Black Bears got a fairly solid pitching performance from their other starting pitcher, freshman Sarah Bennis, but couldn’t overcome an early 3-0 deficit.
With Albany up 3-0 in the bottom of the fourth inning, the Black Bears sparked a minor rally. Cheney led off the inning with a double to left. Amy Kuhl added a single, and Molly McKinney drove in Cheney on a ground out to third, cutting the score 3-1 in favor of Albany. Two batters later, Erin Provost’s double to left-center scored Christina Belmonte, who had come on to pinch run for Kuhl.
Albany went on to have a two-run sixth inning, but UMaine kept plugging away. McKinney scored on another RBI-single from Merchant in the bottom of the sixth inning, but the Black Bears ran out of time and Albany held on for a 5-3 win.
Despite splitting Saturday, Coach Smith was not totally disappointed in her team’s performance.
“We saw a lot more confidence out of the hitters today, more so than I saw yesterday,” Smith said.
On Friday, UMaine struggled at the plate, but miscues in the field really hurt the Black Bears.
“We didn’t play as crisp as we needed to,” Smith said. “They were incredibly aggressive, and when we made mistakes on defense, we gave them extra bases.
In game one, the score was tied 1-1 in the top of the third inning when Albany scored a pair of runs on one hit and two UMaine errors in the inning. Albany added a run in the fourth inning, but the Black Bears cut the score to 4-2 in the bottom of the fifth, when Kuhl singled with runners on second and third to score Belmonte. That would be the last run UMaine could muster, however, as they dropped the game, 4-2.
In game two on Friday, Albany jumped on three UMaine errors in the sixth inning to catapult the Great Danes to victory. Maine came into the inning with a 2-1 lead, but Albany quickly scored four unanswered runs on only one hit and three Maine errors, which gave Albany the lead for good.
“[Albany] had some key hits in some clutch situations, but the extra bases, I think, were the biggest difference,” Smith said. “They definitely deserve to be one of the top two teams [in America East] right now. They’re playing well, very well.”
Smith looked for positives her team could take away from the series, despite winning only one of four games.
“Probably one of the nice things we can take away from these games is, we played a lot better on defense the first game,” Smith said. “The other thing is, the girls made better adjustments at the plate, so that they were hitting the ball harder, working the pitchers a lot more and making them throw more pitches.”
UMaine will have to take some of those positives into their upcoming games with Binghamton University Tuesday and Boston University Wednesday. The Binghamton game is a make-up contest of a rained-out game the two teams missed earlier this season.
Bangor Daily News