With two outs in the top of the seventh inning, Buffalo catcher Kristin Waldron stepped to the plate with her team trailing by one. A passed ball advanced the tying runner to third, and cries for a rally were echoing out of the visitor’s dugout.

But Syracuse’s sophomore pitcher Jenna Caira didn’t falter. She gathered herself and struck Waldron out, looking to give SU the victory.

Behind 13 strikeouts from Caira, the Orange got back to .500 with a 3-2 win over the Bulls (8-17) in its home opener. Caira (6-8) went the distance for Syracuse without allowing an earned run or a walk in the first game of a doubleheader. SU (14-13) won the second game, 8-0.

‘That’s what we can expect from Jenna,’ SU head coach Leigh Ross said. ‘She threw awesome.’

Caira came up with a huge performance in a game in which her team struggled offensively. The Orange left the bases loaded in both the second and third innings and stranded eight runners throughout the game. Buffalo’s pitchers shut out the Orange in five of its six innings at-bat.

‘I thought that we should have been a little more aggressive,’ Ross said. ‘The more you swing, the more chances you have at the ball dropping in. It’s when we sit here and wait around too long, hoping for that right pitch every single at-bat that nothing happens.’

The lack of production early on led to a two-run deficit after three innings. Consecutive throwing errors on sophomore catcher Lacey Kohl in the top of the third allowed Buffalo’s only runs of the game to score.

Finally, though, something did happen for the Orange in the bottom of the fourth. After Caira and sophomore first baseman Kelly Saco reached base safely, a sacrifice bunt moved them into scoring position. Next up was freshman Veronica Grant, who ripped a single to the opposite field to score Caira and cut the lead in half.

Then, a costly error by Waldron kept SU’s rally alive. With Rachel Helman at the plate, Grant took off for second. Waldron’s throw sailed into center field, which allowed Saco to score and Grant to advance to third. The Orange would tack on its final run when Grant scored on an infield single by sophomore Lisaira Daniels. Syracuse sent eight batters to the plate in the fourth during its only offensive outburst of the game.

‘Knowing how our team is, we do make a lot of comebacks, so we had a lot of confidence in ourselves,’ Grant said. ‘There was a lot of game left, and we saw the pitcher more than once, so we knew what she was going to come with. We knew we were probably going to come back.’

A one-run cushion was all that Caira needed. She struck out five of the last nine batters she faced while giving up just two hits in the final four innings. Combining power with a deadly changeup, she was able to keep the Buffalo hitters guessing all game long.

‘(Mixing speeds) is usually my game plan,’ Caira said. ‘The changeup is definitely necessary when I’m out there. It keeps people off balance. I try to get in their head a little bit so they don’t really know what’s coming next.’

‘Necessary’ might be an understatement. It’s deadly, Ross said.

‘The changeup, it’s the best changeup that I’ve seen in college softball,’ she said. ‘That’s her strikeout pitch.’

And if Caira keeps throwing like this, the Orange is in prime position with Big East play beginning in a little more than a week. The team is confident coming off its run of tournaments against top competition, and the players are starting to develop a bit of a swagger.

‘I think it was very important to get this win,’ Grant said. ‘It gets our team off on a good run for home games. We know what we can do as a team. We don’t want to drop down to their standard and play with them. We want to stay at our level and just keep climbing.’

mjcohe02@syr.edu

Published on March 24, 2010 at 12:00 pm

Contact Michael: mjcohe02@syr.edu | @Michael_Cohen13