In front of a record crowd, Lady Cajuns dominate. By Dan McDonald
The Cajuns ran their record to 52-4 with three easy wins in the regional, outscoring their opponents 23-5 and never trailing in three games — the first against out-manned Mississippi Valley State and the last two against a highly-regarded Stanford team from the softball-strong West Coast.
UL, now holding the nation’s best record heading into the NCAA Super Regional round, made things look surprisingly simple all weekend. Even in the regional-clinching 6-2 win over the Cardinal on Sunday, the Cajuns were rarely threatened and led 5-0 before Stanford managed a couple of sixth-inning runs off starter and senior Ashley Brignac.
On came freshman Jordan Wallace, who almost had a run-rule win over the Cardinal in the 9-3 winners’ bracket final on Saturday. Wallace retired the final four batters she faced, inducing two ground balls and a fly ball that Brianna Cherry gathered in center field for the clinching out to begin the celebration for the stadium-record 2,729 in attendance.
“This place is unbelievable,” Brignac says. “To know that we got another shot to play in front of these fans was very exciting. I thought Senior Day might have been our last day on that field, but to play again in the NCAA Tournament felt unbelievable.”
Only one of the 16 regionals drew anything close to the six-session total of 14,097 fans that came out to Lamson Park. Louisville was close, but those Cardinals had intense state rival Kentucky in their field — and once UK was out, Louisville’s Sunday crowd dipped to 1,000 less than the Cajuns as they fell to Michigan in that finale.
“This isn’t an easy place to play in,” says Stanford coach John Rittman, a statement that doesn’t get made about 99 percent of the softball facilities in the country. No one in the country packs them in like the Cajun program, and they’re not just in the park; they’re loud and boisterous in a sport where the word “crowd” is a misnomer at even the “name” schools.
Late in Sunday’s game, when the Cajuns held a commanding lead after home runs by Christi Orgeron and Sarah Draheim, fans sitting in the outfield began a “Ragin’” chant that drew a quick “Cajun” response from those in the grandstand. The cheers went back and forth for nearly half a minute, long enough to realize that doesn’t happen anywhere else in the country. No other program even has enough fans sitting in outfield seats to generate that kind of involvement.
“When they started doing that, from the infield to the outfield, it just gave you chills,” says Brignac, after running her season record to 23-3. “We had amazing support. They packed the house.”
That packed house turned out to be the final home appearance. The 14th-seeded Cajuns are matched against third-seeded Arizona State for this week’s Super Regional, and ASU’s winning of the “if necessary” game 4-0 over Syracuse late Sunday night means the Cajuns will head for Tempe for the super regional round.
Even with UL on the road, it’s not a typical No. 3 vs. No. 14 matchup. In fact, UL already holds a 9-2 win over the defending national champion Sun Devils in the Judi Garman Classic in Fullerton, Calif., in mid-March. Obviously, that’s more than two months ago, and both teams are very different now, but the Cajuns still haven’t lost to a team outside of Sun Belt Conference play this season (an astounding 28-0).
Sunday’s win followed the pattern that had been in place most of the season. The Cajuns got two runs in the first inning on an RBI single by Orgeron that plated Katie Smith — who had three straight three-hit games in the regional — and a Cherry sacrifice fly that scored Nerissa Myers.
Two innings later, Orgeron — who struggled in the Sun Belt Tournament and in the regional’s first two games — blasted her 22nd home run of the year for a 3-0 lead. Orgeron also added a sacrifice fly in the sixth that plated Natalie Fernandez with the game’s final run, giving the senior three RBIs on Sunday and a nation-leading 94 this year. Only four players in NCAA history have ever had 100 or more RBIs in a season — Orgeron with 101 last year, and three Arizona players.
“The greatest thing about this team is that I never feel the pressure that I have to hit,” Orgeron says. “Some teams have one hitter that they rely on, and if they don’t get the big swings or the big hit, they are going to lose. That’s not this team. This is a team. This is one through nine.”
“They have speed at the top of the lineup, power in the middle of the lineup and speed at the bottom of the lineup,” Rittman says. “That’s a very good team we lost to this weekend.”
The Lamson Park faithful would agree.
MAY 24 Blogger Robert Mann posts this entry about the Baton Rouge Chamber's recent report on Louisiana's higher education system. It's critical to economic development, and yet our system is facing a "funding crisis" with no way to resolve it, the report says. The Chamber says control of tuition and fees must be returned to the higher ed governing boards.
MAY 24 Here's a NBC33 story about Tyrann Mathieu. He has signed with the Arizona Cardinals, inking a $3 million, four-year deal. He gets a signing bonus of $265K, but gets another, larger bonus if he doesn't get cut from the team for doing drugs. The deal reportedly includes mandatory tests and meetings for the player.
MAY 24 Jarvis DeBerry posts here about the redonkulus rhetoric that would have us believe NOLA is a safe city with a murder problem. Maybe the city's crime stats don't compare with its murder stats because you can't manipulate a murder, he says: a dead body's a dead body. It just doesn't make sense, he says, and his readers agree: a poll asks if they believe the city is safe, and more than 90 percent say no.
MAY 24 Jindal administration officials announced Thursday that the privatization of public health care is going to cost a lot more than they budgeted for, the Advocate reports here. "I'm so surprised," said no one. Anywhere. The cost they're projecting now is more than $1 billion - a lot more than the $626 million budgeted for it. And, it's more than it cost the state to operate those hospitals. So why are we doing this again?
MAY 24 Blogger CB Forgotston ridicules the recent PR campaign by the state GOP in the wake of a legislative auditor's request to both major parties. The GOP (apparently unaware that the Dems got the same request) started yammering about being targeted because it had "killed" a tax increase. CB finds that laughable, but it's also pretty funny that the GOP was comparing this episode to the IRS scandal (Because the President has so much to do with our state auditor. Right?).
MAY 24 Politico details some recent fund-raising efforts by Sen. David Vitter, which have raised the question of his future political plans. This time, it is a $5,000 per head "bayou weekend" that includes "Cajun cooking" and an all-caps "alligator hunt," the story reports. Funds raised go to a super PAC that can spend money to support Vitter in federal or state races, the story points out.
MAY 24 The pink building on Royal in the quarter was sold at a sheriff's sale Thursday, this Picayune story reports. An injunction that would have halted the sale wasn't enforced because the family failed to post a $150,000 bond, the story reports. So the owner of the mortgages on the building bought it, for nearly $7 million. Now the feuding family will have to negotiate with that company to get a lease on the building that has housed their business for close to 60 years.
MAY 23 This post in Louisiana Voice tells us about a bill by a Winnsboro lege that would require all public high school students to take at least one Course Choice online class in order to graduate. (What?) Blogger Tom Aswell says it's a monument to "waste and corruption," especially in light of the problems he's exposed with the program in recent weeks. Idaho had a similar program, but voters removed it by a 2-1 margin, Aswell says.
Most Read
in case you missed it
Subscribe to this comment's feed