Softball set to begin league play
With four tournaments under its belt, the Utah State University softball team will open Big West Conference play with three games at Long Beach State University.
The Aggies will play a doubleheader Saturday and a single game Sunday. Currently, Utah State is 3-20 on the season while Long Beach is 22-13 overall, 2-1 in conference.
In their last tournament, the Capital Classic in Sacramento, Calif., the Aggies played their way into the consolation championship before falling 1-0 in 10 innings to Middle Tennessee State University.
Pitcher Xochitl Ramirez said the tournament helped give the team confidence.
“We played really strong ball, and we improved a lot in the tournament in a lot of aspects,” Ramirez said. “I think we’re ready [for conference].”
Head Coach Debbie Bilbao said overall, playing in four tournaments has been good in preparation for the team.
“I think it gave our team an opportunity to get comfortable with us as a coaching staff and comfortable together,” she said. “Just going through growing pains together, that was really important to prepare us for conference.”
Currently in the Big West two teams, the University of the Pacific and California State University Fullerton, are ranked in the top 25.
Bilbao said, “The Big West is a very tough softball conference and I wouldn’t ‘t have it any other way. It’s a great conference to play softball in. It’s always competitive, top to bottom.”
Ramirez said, “We played a lot of ranked teams [in tournaments] and we’ve done pretty well against them. Coming into the conference I think we’re really well-prepared.”
Owning a 3-20 record, teams may overlook the Aggies, but Bilbao said the team is much better than the record indicates.
“Every time we play somebody, the coaches from the other team always mention how much better the team is now,” she said. “Just the difference between this year and years past and how competitive they are. They never give up. We play first pitch to last pitch and that’s important.”
Ramirez said, “A lot of teams, you can tell they come in very complacent. When we start playing them they realize there’s more.”
With conference play beginning, Bilbao said the season has entered a new phase.
“Certainly the girls want to do well in conference,” she said. “I think we’ve prepared appropriately. We’ve been through some ups and downs and I think we’re on our way up on the upslope.”
Part of the preparation has included working on pitching, Ramirez said.
Bilbao said, “Our ERA has gone way back down and as long as your ERA starts to go down the errors go down, and that’s really important. Our pitchers need to set a tone.”
On the offensive side, Bilbao said it is a matter of taking advantage of opportunities and executing.
“We’re starting to get hits and get people in scoring position and we’re executing better,” she said. “We just need to convert and take care of some of those RBIs when we have opportunities.”
Bilbao said, “We’re in almost every ball game now. A lot of those I wish we’d learn how to take ball games when teams are giving them to us and learn how to control the momentum. If we do that we’ll start winning more.”