After having hours to decompress and gather my thoughts I will say that this game was an emotional roller coaster, but it did hurt. I imagine just as much as the early exit in the sec tournament. There were a lot of good things today, but unfortunately a lot more bad things. Yes there will be games that will be the case and a team/coach will outplay you, but what separates good and great teams in the postseason is how you respond. I think Payton did okay at times it was a little too predicable on what pitch was going to be called and correct me if I am wrong, but I have not seen an "offspeed" from her since the beginning of the year? I think if Karen can call that pitch a little more it will help. As far as Karlyn goes, man she was a dog out there just battling every inning no matter what traffic was going on around her. I feel for her the most considering she did everything asked of her on what looked like a very hot day. I will say that Boo needs to clean up the defense at 3rd, too many balls that she is misplaying that are allowing baserunners. And finally the most disappointing part of the day....the offense. I truly do not know what conversations were being had, but clearly they did not work. Once we got past the 8th inning obviously beaver was implementing the changeup more often, but to hitters like Boo, West, G she was hammering strikes over the plate that we NEEDED to drive. I hated seeing how we kept getting underneath the ball when if we were a little more disciplined and just had a better bat path with our hands we could square up a couple of more balls. I do not know if the issue was timing or pitch identification, but some hitters just went up there guessing or getting jammed....for someone that Pannell who had at least 3 ABs in a row where she could've driven someone in if she just lets the ball travel a little longer she is barreling up a couple balls. Let's be honest, we got our free passes with some walks/hbps but just kept trying to lift the ball when their defense was shaky anything could've happened if we just put the ball on the ground. I will say I would have liked Karen to be more aggressive on the base paths with hit n runs, bunt n runs, stealing bases at the right times in order to make some chaos happen. I think this time of year the homers will come when they come, but good teams against good pitching are able to play all different types of offense whether it'd be the long ball, station to station, or the speed game. Create momentum early in the game on defense/pitching and take the wind out of their sail early and we are putting ourselves in a position to win, if we wait until the latter part of the game our backs are against the wall. Leadership from Milloy, West, Gottshall, and Puni are going to be critical.
