EVANSVILLE, Ind. – University of Southern Indiana Softball heads back on the road to Tennessee this weekend for another preseason tournament before the start of Ohio Valley Conference play.
USI Softball (3-9) will first travel to Clarksville, Tennessee, on Friday to face Austin Peay State University (7-8) and Ohio University (9-5) at 3 and 5:30 p.m., respectively. On Saturday, the Screaming Eagles make the short trip to Nashville, Tennessee, for a pair of games against Belmont University (8-5) starting at 1 p.m. USI concludes the weekend back in Clarksville for a game against Central Michigan University (5-5) at 10 a.m. on Sunday.
The Screaming Eagles are 16-13 all-time against Austin Peay, 0-3 against Belmont, and 0-2 against Central Michigan. USI will be squaring off against Ohio for the first time in program history.
USI is coming off a 2-3 trip last weekend at the Florida Atlantic University Joan Joyce Classic. The Screaming Eagles captured their two wins against the University of Massachusetts, 4-2, and against Villanova University, 2-1. USI won in walk-off fashion against the Wildcats to end the trip last Sunday. In their other three games, the Eagles fell to the University of Kansas and twice against Florida Atlantic.
The seventh-inning walk-off winner against Villanova was definitely an exclamation point to conclude the trip to Florida for the Screaming Eagles. Junior infielder
Sydney Long delivered the walk-off RBI knock in the bottom of the seventh inning that scored freshman outfielder
Katelyn Marx from second base. It was Long's second career walk-off hit, as Long previously came through with a game-winner in last season's series-opening 1-0 win against the University of Tennessee at Martin in the eighth inning.
Marx and Long are two of three Screaming Eagles batting over .300 this season. Marx leads the squad, hitting .361, with Long batting .324. Senior outfielder
Caroline Stapleton sits in between the two with a .333 batting average. Stapleton also has a team-high 10 runs scored. Long is tied for the team lead with five RBIs alongside junior outfielder
Kate Satkoski and sophomore first baseman
Grace Huffman. Satkoski has four extra-base hits, coming on three doubles and a home run.
Freshman pitcher
Anna Kemp (1-3) currently paces the pitching staff with 32 innings pitched and 30 strikeouts. In the right-hander's last outing, Kemp went five innings and struck out six in a no-decision against Villanova last Sunday. Fellow freshman pitcher
Elly Robbins (1-3) is coming off her first career win, going the full seven innings and allowing only two runs against Massachusetts last Saturday.
After this weekend's trip down to Tennessee, USI will open its OVC and home schedule next weekend at USI Softball Field against Tennessee State University. The series is slated for a doubleheader starting at 1 p.m. next Saturday, March 7, before concluding on Sunday, March 8, at Noon.
For this weekend's slate of games, only Friday's contest against Austin Peay will be streamed this weekend, which can be seen with a subscription to ESPN+. Additional coverage and live stat links are available on the USI Softball schedule page on usiscreamingeagles.com.
