The Mavericks must do what they have done all season…win.
The Colorado Mesa University softball team recently had their first series split all year against Colorado Christian University (CCU) last weekend. CMU also lost their first set of consecutive games in their games against Regis and CCU.
In order to seal the Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference (RMAC) regular season title, CMU must win two games this weekend in the final series of the regular season against CSU-Pueblo. The final four games series will be a rather exciting set of games to watch due to the stipulations. CMU must win two games in order to seal the entire RMAC and host the RMAC Tournament, while CSU-Pueblo must avoid a sweep to stay in the eight spot in the rankings in order to make the RMAC Tournament.
CMU started the season by winning a record-number 37 games before taking a loss. CMU also held the number one spot in the country in the NFCA Division II Top 25 Coaches’ Poll for seven weeks before dropping down to number three after losing three games in the last two weeks. Despite losing their overall number one ranking, CMU did retain their number one NCAA South Central Regional Rankings.
Despite the Mavericks still being one of the top teams in the country and the number one team in the RMAC, there are still improvements to be made in order to perform well in this next series against the Thunderwolves.
“We stumbled but we haven’t fallen,” Head coach Ben Garcia said. “Now what we need to do is finish the season the way we committed to starting the season out…what we wanna do is have a great finish.”
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In the last series against CCU, the Mavericks gave up eight runs in the game three loss in which is the most runs in a game CMU has given up all season.
“It’s okay to make a mistake and give up one run,” Garcia said. “We prolonged that by making another mistake and not shutting the door when we wanted to.”
Also, McKenzie Surface took her first loss of the season in the game after starting 19-0.
Surface has been battling a knee injury she suffered in the series against Regis. The defending RMAC Pitcher of the Year was not suspected to pitch in the series against CCU but the junior insisted on it in which Coach Garcia then decided to start her. Before suffering the loss, Surface won her 68th career game in Game Two the day before, which set the record for the most wins for a starting pitcher in CMU history.
“We gave her an opportunity and she did well,” Garcia said. “She did well but it wasn’t the same McKenzie. She is not getting the velocity she needs because of the torque off of her knee.”
In more of a positive note, the overall offense for the Mavericks, and their explosive hitting has not slowed down one bit. Brooke Hodgson still leads the team in the mass majority of hitting categories such as batting average (.528), hits (74) and home runs (14).
In the last series, however, CMU did show weaknesses and concerns in their offense as they left nine runners on base in their 8-4 loss to CCU. The Mavericks did record ten hits but could record only four runs.
“Hitting isn’t an issue and it shouldn’t be an issue,” Garcia said. “However, two-out hitting could be better.”
The four-game series against the Thunderwolves will start on Saturday with the first game starting at noon.
“We’re not going down there just to win two games,” Coach Garcia said. “We wanna sweep the series.”
After this series, the Mavericks will be looking towards the RMAC Tournament which starts on May 3 and eventually the regional tournaments where the brackets for those tournaments will be released on May 7.
