The Bobcats are floundering.
They have lost seven of their last nine games, something they haven’t done since March of 2015, Savannah Jo Dorsey’s redshirt season.
Their recent losing streak is a product of an intense offensive struggle.
The Bobcats have averaged just two runs per game in their last nine games, and their team batting average has dropped nearly 20 points since the start of conference play. Coach Jodi Hermanek has experimented with several different remedies for this cold streak — including sliding shortstop Mikayla Cooper up to the leadoff spot Tuesday against Marshall — yet nothing has worked.
Despite their worst stretch of play in almost two years, the Bobcats are only three games out of first place in the Mid-American Conference. If they can re-discover their once premiere offense over the final nine games of the season, they still have a chance to enter the conference tournament as a top seed.
The mission for redemption begins this weekend against Bowling Green. Bowling Green will come to Ohio Softball Field this weekend tied for the third best record in the MAC, just one game ahead of the Bobcats.
Bowling Green’s second-ranked MAC offense has given the rest of the conference trouble, but the Bobcat pitching staff is finishing up a dominant April. Despite the lack of team success, Bobcat pitchers have allowed just 23 runs in 89 innings this month. And they’ve only allowed greater than three runs three times since the start of conference play.
The Bowling Green pitching staff, on the other hand, has been the team’s weakness. It ranks eighth in the MAC in earned run average and 10th in hits allowed. This weekend is the perfect opportunity for the Bobcat offense to work out of its recent slump.
This season was supposed to be the dream season for the Bobcats.
They lost just three players from last season’s MAC runner-up team. Savannah Jo Dorsey was going to be another year better. They recruited pinch runners from multiple other sports to bulk up their base-running depth because they anticipated being in important games in May.
If they want to keep the dream season alive, though, they need to snap out of their offensive daze.
And with a questionable pitching staff coming to Athens this weekend, now is their best chance.
