Expectations for the softball team are in flux. Before the season began the coaches Weekly, and particularly Ralph, seemed to think this was a reloading rather than a rebuilding year, and that in spite of extreme youth a repeat trip to the College World Series was a reachable goal. Retrenching seemed to occur in spite of a gaudy early win-loss record, and the inexperience of most of the players became a more frequent talking point. After a poor first weekend on the road against unranked South Carolina in SEC play resulted in only one win in three games, the second version of the narrative seemed more justified than the first. The next weekend series and home conference opener versus #18 Missouri was more encouraging, with the Lady Vols taking two out of three. But the Georgia series this past weekend at Lee Stadium in which the #7 Bulldogs were swept may rekindle Ralph’s earlier enthusiasm for the idea that this year’s team could go very far in the post-season after all.
It’s difficult to say at this point whether the Lady Vols have improved that much or if Georgia was not as good as everyone thought. The Lady Dawgs have dined on a lot of home cooking and came into the series with a losing record against the few ranked teams they faced, so there was some evidence of feet of clay. Their gaudy batting averages may have been the result of having faced weaker pitching, rather than because they possess superior bats. Certainly Tennessee’s quartet of pitchers appeared far more masterful than they had in their six previous SEC games, most high-scoring slugfests, and this improvement either came at Georgia’s expense or because Georgia isn’t actually all that.
Tennessee has benefited from some mid-week stat-padding games as well. Erin Gabriel has sparkled particularly on the week days against admittedly weaker teams, having tossed no-hitters against two non-conference teams fourteen days apart, the first a 16-strikeout, 7-inning masterpiece against Illinois State and the second a run-rule perfect game of 5 innings versus in-state rival ETSU. In between these gems, the Lady Vols absorbed a rare out-of-conference loss to visiting Western Kentucky, with their hitters unable to get anything going against WKU ace Miranda Kramer, who gave up only two hits while fanning 14 Lady Vols in as masterful a pitching performance as I have ever seen or ever expect to see, and that includes Gabriel’s first no-hitter. Why Kramer is not pitching for a major national power is a mystery to me.
The hallmark of this Lady Vol team seems to be hitting and particularly power hitting, as everyone in the lineup is capable of putting the ball over the outfield wall and many are doing it regularly. Taylor Koenig is leading the team in HR’s but Annie Aldrete is coming on strong, resembling more and more the phenom that she was as a freshman. Meghan Gregg is starting to live up to the pre-season hype both at the plate and on the field and Scarlett McSwain, in spite of a rough weekend at the plate against Georgia, has shown genuine promise as a power hitter. Rainey Gaffin and Lexi Overstreet are bonafide stars with multiple skills and two years of eligibility remaining, and Tory Lewis and Cheyanne Tarango, this year’s seniors, are putting injuries behind them and assuming ever more significant roles. Gretchen Aucoin, the junior transfer from Texas Tech, has been solid pitching and hitting. Defense, and infield defense particularly, is not as strong for the Lady Vols as it has been in the recent past but our expectations may be unrealistic, as we were spoiled for years by Chevanne, Shipman, and Gibson consistently robbing hitters of surefire hits and shutting down rallies before they could even begin with a solid catch or a blistering throw.
Georgia suffered mightily in all three games, either surrendering the lead or at least a tie in the final innings all three days. Most frustrating of all must have been the Monday night game, which I did not witness in person because I needed to be at home for the NCAA Lady Vol basketball game, when the winning run was waved in after the relief pitcher fell down while trying to deliver the ball, an illegal pitch by rule and an unwise one by any standard. It was an inexplicable thing to see, and Ralph allowed a thing he had not seen before. McSwain was having a good at bat, and Ralph said he wished the outcome could have been decided more conventionally with her coming up with a series-saving hit, but nothing in the rules would allow Tennessee to decline the base and the score, and I doubt if Ralph would have taken it even if it were an option, because SEC wins are precious. Tennessee established it’s resiliency coming back from their terrible South Carolina series, and now we will see if Georgia has the fortitude to rebound from a terrible series of their own. SEC seasons are way too short, and there’s not a lot of margin for error.