CLEARWATER, Fla. — No. 13 Oregon kicks off its season on Thursday as it heads to Clearwater, Florida for the NFCA Leadoff Classic.
They’ll play six games in four days, looking to make the first steps towards a return to the NCAA Tournament after reaching the Super Regionals in 2023.
“We’ve learned so much and had so much experience that we have a lot of things answered going into the season,” said head coach Melyssa Lombardi last week. “So now it’s just all about implementing it right away.
“I think we’re very deep, we’re very experienced. We have nine seniors and super-seniors, and there’s something about having a team with that many seniors that should be very uncomfortable for an opponent.”
The Ducks start their season at 4 PM on Thursday against the Indiana Hoosiers. Oregon won the only meeting between the two teams in 2010, but these teams will have plenty of opportunities to square off when the Ducks head to the Big Ten next season.
The Hoosiers are playing in the NFCA Leadoff Classic for the second straight year, last year going 3-1. They parlayed that strong start into one of their best seasons in program history, finishing the year 44-18 — the winningest season since 1994. They reached the Big Ten Championship game before losing to Northwestern and made their first NCAA Tournament appearance since 2011.
Indiana lost Big Ten Player of the Year, Taryn Kern, to the transfer portal, but still ranks No. 32 in the NCAA’s RPI rankings.
Oregon’s next game will come at 2 PM on Friday against the Kansas Jayhawks. Lombardi recorded her first win with the Ducks against Kansas in 2019 at the Kajikawa Classic. The Jayhawks had a disappointing season last year, finishing seventh in the Big 12 with a 25-27 record. They rank 53rd in the NCAA’s RPI rankings.
The Ducks will take on the Liberty Flames in the second half of their Friday doubleheader at 5 PM. Liberty took the eventual national champions, Oklahoma, to extra innings in their first game last year, the first sign of what would be a strong season for the Flames. They finished the season with a 40-22 record, winning four games against ranked teams and reaching the Los Angeles Regional of the NCAA
Tournament. The Flames rank 25th in the NCAA’s RPI rankings but aren’t ranked in the top 25 of any poll.
Saturday’s doubleheader starts at 10 AM against Missouri State. The Bears went 31-20 last season, but lost a heartbreaking 15-inning game to Belmont in the quarterfinals of the Missouri Valley Conference Tournament. The Bears are ranked 76th in the NCAA’s RPI rankings. Oregon beat Missouri State 2-1 in the teams’ only other meeting, 44 years ago in the 1980 AIAW World Series.
Saturday’s second game will give Oregon their toughest challenge of the weekend as they take on the No. 7 Clemson Tigers at PM. The game will be part of history, as it will be the third game in a triple-header of the first collegiate softball games to be broadcast live on MLB Network.
Despite being in only their fifth season as a program, Clemson has consistently been one of the best teams in the country, reaching the NCAA Tournament in each of the last three years. Last year they went 49-12, hosting and winning a Regional before losing to Oklahoma in the Super Regionals.
The Tigers are led by fifth-year senior, Valerie Cagle, the reigning USA Softball Player of the Year. The two-way superstar enters 2024 as the best player in college softball after going 25-8 last year with a 1.56 ERA over 193 innings in the circle while slashing .469/.565/.887 with 19 home runs at the plate. Per 6-4-3 Charts’ wins above replacement (WAR) metric, not only was Cagle the most valuable player in the country, but her 13.6 WAR was 4.2 wins better than the second-best player. This means that if Cagle had been replaced by an average player last year, Clemson’s record would have dropped from 49-12 to 36-25, taking them from the third-best record in the ACC to the 6th. The Ducks and Tigers will be at center stage for college softball on Saturday night, and a win in this game will be a promising sign of things to come for either team.
Oregon caps off their weekend against the Army Black Knights at 7 AM on Sunday. Army finished last season 22-37, finishing third in the Patriot League. The Black Knights played much better at home than on the road and at neutral fields last season, going 10-2 at home but 12-35 in all other games. Army reached the Patriot League Championship Game before losing to Boston University and come into this season ranked 159th in the NCAA’s RPI rankings. Oregon beat the Black Knights in the only previous meeting between the two teams in the 2019 Mary Nutter Collegiate Classic.
“We wanna start strong and get off on the right foot,” said Lombardi, “In order for us to be ready to compete in a deadly Pac-12 conference, then we’ve got to handle teams right now in non-conference.”
Saturday night’s game against Clemson will be the headliner of the weekend, but Indiana and Liberty are both good teams and will be good tests for the Ducks to start this season. Oregon finished last season strong, reaching the Super Regional of the NCAA Tournament before falling to Oklahoma State, and will have big shoes to fill offensively without Allee Bunker and Terra McGowan. This team is led by a strong pitching staff that returns 98 percent of their innings from a staff that pitched to the tune of a 2.79 ERA a year ago.
Two names to watch for the Ducks this weekend will be Stevie Hansen and Emma Kauf. Last season, Hansen improved on just about every stat from her All-Pac-12 freshman season, dropping her ERA from 3.27 to 2.63 while tossing 22 more innings. She’ll be looking to build on the success she saw as a sophomore in her junior campaign.
“I feel like my first year, that was new, I had nothing to lose at that point. Then last year it got to a point where I cared too much about the statistics,” Hansen said. “ It doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks. I just need to work hard, I just need to help my team in any way I can. That’s kinda been more of the mindset pushing me this year.”
Kauf, a three-time All-ACC selection during her time at Georgia Tech, will be trying to fill the hole at catcher left by the graduation of Terra McGowan. She posted a 1.025 OPS during her four seasons with the Yellow Jackets and is Oregon’s biggest transfer portal addition from this past offseason.
“Being a fifth-year, I think I have a lot of advantages,” Kauf said. “I’ve had experience playing in the ACC, also a very competitive conference, and now I get the opportunity to play in the Pac for its last year, which is a great opportunity. It’s gonna be new teams and new arms for me, so I think I get to grow and learn in that aspect. I’m just really excited to grow as an individual and use that as my competitive advantage.”
“She’s got a beautiful left-handed swing, she’s clutch, she hits a lot of line drives, she hits really good pitching,” Lombardi said of Kauf. “She has good communication with our pitchers and the defense. She’s here to do what it takes for the team.”
It will be a long season and this weekend is only the start, but this team has their sights set on Oklahoma City and the Women’s College World Series. A strong showing this weekend is just the first step.
Comments