This weekend junior pitcher Amber May threw more innings than she has all season in a three-game series. In fact, her 21 innings pitched is second most this season, behind a total of 22 innings in a five-game tournament at the Arkansas Razorback Invitational.

At the invitational, May pitched 22 innings, giving up 24 hits and 14 runs, compiling a 4.14 ERA and a record of 1-3 in five appearances.

In those five games, May struck out a total of 11 batters, while in Eastern’s three-game Ohio Valley Conference series against Eastern Kentucky this weekend, May fanned 10 Colonels in the series’ rubber game.

“They came out swinging today, which makes sense because they’re a good hitting team,” May said. “Coach told me to keep it off the plate and get the change-up going. So, that was good because I hadn’t used that in a while.”

All across the board, May’s stats were better compared to Arkansas Razorback Invitation in early March.

In this weekend’s series, May pitched 21 1/3 innings, only gave up 16 hits and six runs, while compiling a 0.98 ERA and a 2-0 record in three appearances.

Putting practice to test against EKU

Eastern head coach Kim Schuette said the Panthers have been working considerably on hitting ground balls in practice.

“We’ve practiced a lot on hitting ground balls and putting the ball in play with two strikes,” Schuette said.

In the weekend series against Eastern Kentucky (12-27, 6-7 OVC), Schuette said Eastern used that practice often in game situations to its advantage.

In the series’ two close games, Schuette said ground balls kept the Panthers’ offense at the plate, and they delivered with clutch hits.

“We set ourselves up in a lot of innings to score but didn’t quite score as many runs as I thought we could have,” Schuette said. “But we got clutch when we needed them and those were ground balls.”

Umpires questioned after nightcap

Despite arguing a couple calls in Saturday’s nightcap, Schuette said the umpires did a decent job calling the game.

However, there were two calls Schuette said she had to question.

“I thought they missed the call of a batter hitting the ball off her foot, and one other one but otherwise I think they did fine,” Schuette said.

Even though Schuette disagreed with two calls, she said sometimes she challenged calls to pump up her team in a game Eastern (19-17, 9-4 OVC) lost 7-0.

“When things aren’t going your way and you’re making stupid, stupid plays on defense, sometimes as a coach you do that and you start begging and I did,” Schuette said.

Around the OVC

This weekend, all OVC teams were in conference battles, but only Southeast Missouri, Jacksonville State, Eastern, Austin Peay and Tennessee Martin came out with series wins.

Southeast Missouri played Tennessee State in a three-game series, taking 2-of-3. Jacksonville State defeated Morehead State by sweeping them in a three-game series.

Austin Peay rallied back after losing the first game of the series to Murray State, to take the final two and win the series. League-leading Tennessee Martin took 2-of-3 against Tennessee Tech.

There weren’t any big changes in the conference standings, with the top four teams standing pat, Tennessee Martin is in first place in the conference, followed by Morehead State, who holds a tiebreaker over Eastern, who is in third place. Jacksonville State is currently sitting in fourth.

Alex McNamee can be reached at 581-7944 or admcnamee@eiu.edu.

Freshman outfielder Melise Brown had fours hits and three runs during the weekend series against Eastern Kentucky University at Williams Field.(Danny Damiani/The Daily Eastern News)

(more…)