Softball: Princeton splits pair against Seton Hall

The first game put Princeton’s best pitcher, junior Liza Kuhn, up against Brooke Tull, one of Seton Hall’s struggling hurlers. Tull’s ERA entering the game was almost double that of Kuhn’s, giving Princeton reason to have confidence.

After two scoreless innings, freshman shortstop Alyssa Schmidt and junior first baseman Alex Peyton each knocked in a run, giving Princeton a 2-0 lead through the third. The score remained unchanged going into the fifth frame, when Kuhn found herself in a jam after loading the bases before recording a single out. However, two consecutive strikeouts by Kuhn, who finished the game with eight whiffs, and a harmless fly ball to left field got the Tigers out of trouble.

Escaping the fifth inning with the lead was very important for the Tigers, as that inning has by far been the worst for the team this season, and because the team had lost only one game it had led after five frames.

The Pirates challenged the Tigers again in the final inning, when they put runners on second and third base with only one out, but Kuhn kept those players where they were to seal the victory. The win was the third for Kuhn, who now possesses half of the team’s total wins.

Kuhn notched her first shutout of the season and Princeton’s second of the year.

“Liza always comes out really strong,” freshman catcher Cara Worden said. “She’s a great pitcher with some great pitches and always mixes them up really well. She’s a really good presence on the field and it’s great to have her with her great attitude and great leadership.”

The second game did not go nearly as well for the Tigers. The Pirates scored a run right off the bat in the first and then added another run in the third.

Despite finishing with one more hit than they did in the first game, the Tigers struggled at stringing their offensive rallies together, never putting a run on the board.

The Pirates scored three insurance runs in the seventh inning off of Peyton, who relieved freshman pitcher Meredith Brown after four frames, helping cement the win as the Pirates avoided the sweep.

“I think the only thing was that we just failed to adjust to that new pitcher,” Worden said of the difference between the two games. “She was throwing a little bit slower and was more of a junk pitcher than the first two. We usually don’t have a problem adjusting to pitchers, but now we know going into our series this weekend that we will have to pay more attention to that.”

“I thought that in the first game that our energy was just really up and really high,” Brown said. “We were dancing in the dugout and just having fun with the game. The second game we just lost a little bit of the energy but I’m sure that throughout the year we’ll be able to figure out how to keep up the energy for both games.”

Princeton takes its 2-2 Ivy League record on the road this weekend to play doubleheaders against Yale and Brown.