Syracuse Softball Comes Back Down to Earth in 7-0 Loss to California

After playing perhaps its best softball of the season last weekend, Syracuse came crashing back down to earth in a 7-0 loss to Cal on Friday. A four-run this inning set the foundation for the Golden Bears, who homered twice after that to stretch their lead.

“I don’t think all of it was on Madison [Knight], right, I think you look at that inning, it started with an error at third base. I think Kelly Breen’s more than capable of fielding that ball that was slapped to her and went into left field, and then they get on on a bunt. You get those two out and we start the inning off with two outs. You let them have their single and their double and maybe they push one run across, but it doesn’t end up being a four spot. So while, yeah, I don’t think Madison had her best stuff today, I think defensively we just need to be better. They’re gonna swing it well, they’re one of the better teams in the conference, so we gotta be able to play defense in order to keep up with that.”

Syracuse put the ball in play today, only being struck out three times on the afternoon. However, Cal showed the ability to bent, but not break. It led to SU being shut out for the seventh time this season.

“We gotta be better with runners in scoring position, right, I thought we had opportunities early in the game that could’ve changed the whole dynamic of the game. I think chasing seven runs is really hard for this team to do. I think they swung but we never swung back, right, so I think that the first couple innings when we had runners in scoring position I think we need better at-bats in those scoring situations and I think the dynamic changes a little bit. We put on a couple runs and feel good about ourselves. I think that as soon as they swung, we kind of took it and never got back up.”

The Orange have their backs against the wall, now likely needing to win the final two games of this series to make the ACC tournament. Syracuse and Cal play game two tomorrow at 1 p.m. For now though, reporting from Skytop Stadium, Cole Purvis, CitrusTV.