• Game Notes
If at first you don’t succeed, try again, and try again is exactly what the University of Evansville softball team will do on Friday as they open the 2010 season at UT Chattanooga’s Frost Classic Inspired by Memorial with Kentucky at 9 a.m. and Austin Peay at 4:30. UE also plays Saturday against Georgetown at 9 a.m. and Wright State at 2.
This is the Purple Aces second time at trying to play the opening game. The original opening games were canceled at Troy due to winter weather and unplayable conditions.
“I think it will be a good weekend for us,” said first-year head coach Mark Redburn. “I’m hoping that the weather holds up for us. We are excited to play. We haven’t had a chance to play yet. I know our players are feeling that need and desire to go out and play, and I feel that as a coach. We need to play. We have been practicing for six weeks. It’s hard to simulate what you get in a game in practices. We do the best we can, but you get tired looking at the same teammates all the time. We just need to play so that we can come back, analyze, adjust, prepare and just do what we need to do.”
With a few extra days to tack onto the practice schedule, it would seem that the Purple Aces would be able to use the time for more pitches and hits. However, with a few of the girls out sick, Redburn said that they had to downshift what the team was doing a little bit as far as practice, weights and conditioning.
“We just made adjustments to what exactly we were doing,” Redburn said. “We have been trying to gradually build them back up this week. We scrimmaged yesterday and will do that today to get them in game mode, and then head out tomorrow.”
The Frost Classic Inspired by Memorial features 16 teams to play 39 games in three days on four fields. Out of UE’s competition for the weekend, Kentucky holds the best 2010 record at 8-2 while Austin Peay is 1-4, Georgetown is 2-2 and Wright State is 2-5.
“You don’t want to fear anybody,” Redburn said. “As a true competitor, you want to play everybody. I would love to sit here and say that we are going 4-0, and I’m not going to say that we are or that it is something that we can’t do. It’s our first weekend. You always have those firsts—first game jitters, first weekend on the road together. Those are all factors, not excuses. The fact of the matter is that we want to go down there and go 4-0. That is how we are going to approach it.”
For those unable to make the trip, live stats are available through UTC’s athletics site, GoMocs.com, under the Frost Classic section of the softball site or by clicking here.
