In the bottom of the seventh, the players in Syracuse’s dugout donned rally caps, flipping their visors upside down. With one out, Neli Casares-Maher walked, giving the rally hope. But then Hannah Dossett hit a grounder to short.

Syracuse (19-24, 8-9 Atlantic Coast) mustered only one hit in its 2-1 loss to Pittsburgh (8-38, 3-14), ending the game with Dossett’s double play. The offensive disappearance comes less than 24 hours removed from a 10-run Orange output on Friday. The Panther’s Brittany Knight entered Saturday’s game with a 6.18 ERA and a 2-16 record and still shut down Syracuse for all seven innings.

“We got changeups this time,” SU head coach Shannon Doepking said. “She kept us off balance, we couldn’t make adjustments to hit the soft serve and then because we were so off balance with the soft stuff, we weren’t able to be on time to hit the hard stuff. So we were kind of caught in the middle of the two pitches.”

The Orange’s lone hit came in the first inning on an Alicia Hansen single to right-center. Gabby Teran, who had walked, reached third and advanced home when the cutoff throw was mishandled. Syracuse only reached five times the remainder of the game, four walks and one error.

Syracuse struggled to do much with those runners, the mistakes Knight gifted. Hansen left early on a steal and was called out. The Panthers turned three doubles plays throughout the game.

“I think this was a pitcher we’re more than capable of hitting and more than capable of hitting her very hard,” Hansen said. “I think that we just got into our heads a little bit.”

The frequent weak contact, Doepking said, showed her their timing just wasn’t where it needed to be. A pitcher that throws as many changeups as Knight puts it into the back of a hitter’s mind and can make them overthink and cause that mistake in timing, Doepking said.

SU’s lead held until the top of the sixth inning when Alexa Romero relieved Miranda Hearn and gave up a two-run double. Hearn gave up just three hits with four strikeouts and three walks over 5.1 innings of work, with one earned run charged to her from a runner left on when Romero entered the game.

Doepking wants hitters to be more decisive. She said that tomorrow SU will spend time in batting practice deciphering how to handle when a pitcher has two pitches going. If it can’t, then Saturday’s result will happen again.

“For us as a coaching staff, it’s figuring out how to be more consistent with the mindset that we want to have,” Doepking said. “… I don’t really care whether we’re up or we’re down. We’re still gonna throw punches at every single opportunity.”

Published on April 20, 2019 at 5:05 pm

Contact Eric: estorms@syr.edu