April 15, 2016
Missouri State at Drake
Ron Buel Field - Des Moines, Iowa
Notes | Live Stats | Watch | Follow @MSUSoftball
The Missouri State softball team (14-22, 3-7) heads to Des Moines, Iowa, this weekend for a conference series against the Drake Bulldogs (23-14, 11-0). Drake sits atop the league standings entering the midpoint of Valley play with an unblemished record in MVC play thus far. The Bears will be making the trip to Des Moines for the fourth time in the last five seasons and have picked up one win in three of the four series played in conference this season.
Sophomore Erika Velasquez Zimmer continued her hot hitting with a pair of singles against Tulsa on Wednesday. It was the fourth-straight multi-hit game for the Coppell, Texas native. Velasquez Zimmer picked up MVC Scholar-Athlete of the Week honors after hitting .727 in last weekend's home series against Southern Illinois.
Senior Erin Duewel leads the Bears with seven home runs and 27 RBI. All seven of her home runs have come with at least one runner on base, the only player in the MVC with seven or more home runs all coming with at least one runner on base. Her two-run blast in the fifth inning against Southern Illinois on April 9 was her 20th career homer, tied for second in MSU history. Duewel also ranks second in the school history with a career .490 slugging percentage.
Sophomore Kaitlin Beason turned in two solid starts in the circle for MSU last weekend. She capped her weekend with a two-run home run in the seventh inning against SIU. It was her fifth long ball of the year, all coming in games in which she was the pitcher of record.
Junior pitcher Erin Struemph has been racking up strikeouts at a near-record rate. In game one on Sunday, April 3 at Loyola, the St. Thomas, Mo., native struck out a career-high 13 batters, the most by a Missouri State pitcher since 2011. She has 434 strikeouts in her career, the sixth-most in school history.
Missouri State's defense remains among the best in the nation. The Bears top the MVC with a .975 fielding percentage, a figure that ranks MSU ninth in the country entering this weekend. It is the seventh-consecutive week that the Bears have been in the top-10 nationally.
QUICK HITS
- Senior Erin Duewel slugged her seventh home run of the season on April 9 versus SIU. It was her 20th career long ball, tying her for second in MSU history. All seven of her home runs have come with at least on runner on base.
- Junior pitcher Erin Struemph struck out a career-high 13 Ramblers in game one at Loyola on April 3. It was the most strikeouts in a game by an MSU pitcher since 2011 and tied for most in MVC this season.
- Struemph has 434 career strikeouts, the sixth-most strikeouts in program history.
- Missouri State's defense enters the weekend ranked ninth in the country with a .975 fielding percentage. It is the seventh-straight week MSU is ranked in the top-10 nationally.
- Junior Olivia Roark leads all MVC players with a .571 batting average during league play.
- All five of sophomore Kaitlin Beason's home runs have come in the same game in which she has been the pitcher of record.
- Redshirt sophomore Allie Alvstad singled to right against Omaha on March 11, her first hit since returning to the team after beating leukemia.
SCOUTING REPORT
Drake Bulldogs: The Bulldogs suffered a pair of midweek non-conference losses, including an extra-inning walk-off defeat at Iowa on Wednesday. However, that is just a brief blip in the recent string of 11-straight wins to open conference play that has Drake atop the MVC standings. Sophomore pitcher Nicole Newman is the undisputed aces of the staff, ranking 11th in the country with 174 strikeouts this season. Her 16 wins are 23rd in the country and she tops the Bulldogs staff with a 2.41 ERA. Offensively, a pair of freshmen lead a group of six players hitting .300 or better. Kennedy Frank has belted a team-best eight home runs and has 15 stolen bases to go with her team-high .358 average. Drake has taken two-of-three from the Bears in each of the last two seasons to take a slim 48-45-1 all-time series lead.
700 AND COUNTING
Head coach Holly Hesse is second in all-time wins by an MVC coach with 718. She entered 2016 with the 37th-most wins among active Division I head coaches. With a 4-0 victory over Illinois State on April 18, 2015, Hesse earned milestone win 700. She trails only current Illinois State coach Melinda Fischer (971 wins in MVC).
BEARS SOFTBALL IS ON THE AIR
The Missouri State softball team will see all of its home games live streamed through Bears All-Access on MissouriStateBears.com.
Some MSU home games will air on KBFL (1060 AM) and can be heard online via RadioSpringfield.com.
2016 Remaining Broadcast Schedule
Wednesday, April 20 vs. Wichita St. (DH) [KBFL]
Wednesday, April 27 vs. SIU Edwardsville [KBFL]
DUEWEL LANDS IN RECORD BOOK
Senior Erin Duewel belted her 20th career home run in the fifth inning against SIU on April 9. That total lands the Lee's Summit native in a tie for second on the all-time career homers list. Duewel's blast against the Salukis was her team-leading seventh long ball of the year and third in MVC games. All seven of Duewel's home runs have come with at least one runner on base.
MILESTONE STRIKEOUT
Junior Erin Struemph is already making waves in the MSU annuls. She picked up three strikeouts in the March 29 start at Arkansas. With her strikeout of UA's Lauren Archuleta to end the second inning, Struemph became just the sixth pitcher in MSU history with 400 career strikeouts. She now has 434 career strikeouts, 13 shy of tying for fifth in school history.
Struemph began conference play with three-consecutive complete-game three hitters. In her fourth start following the start of MVC play, she held Arkansas to four hits in another complete game effort.
SCHOLARLY HONOR
Sophomore Erika Velasquez Zimmer was the first Bear this season to be awarded the MVC Scholar-Athlete of the Week honors. The Coppell, Texas, native earned the accolade for the first time in her career on April 12. She led MSU with nine hits during the week of April 4-10, including a scorching .727 batting average over the three games against SIU. She had multiple hits in all three games against the Salukis, tying a career-high with three hits in two of those games.
IT'S A NUMBERS GAME
Everyone knows that softball/baseball is all about numbers. So here's a few about your MSU softball Bears. The Bears are 11-0 when they outhit the opponent. MSU is also 11-0 when leading after the fifth and sixth innings. When scoring six or more runs, the Bears are 9-1. However, at the other end of the spectrum, MSU is winless in the 15 games in which the team has scored fewer than three runs.
TRIUMPHANT RETURN
The Bears eagerly anticipated the inspirational return of redshirt sophomore Allie Alvstad. She missed the entire 2014-15 academic year to battle through acute myeloid leukemia. She received a bone marrow transplant in December 2014 and returned to the team in 2015-16.
In her first plate appearance of the season, Alvstad drew a four-pitch walk against Northern Colorado on Feb. 13. On Feb. 19, she drove in her first run of the season with a pinch-hit ground out at Western Kentucky. Alvstad registered her first hit since returning with a single to right field on March 11 versus Omaha in Lawrence, Kan.
TAKE YOUR BASE
This season, the Bears have drawn 84 bases on balls and have been hit by a pitch 18 times. MSU received a free pass to first base by one or both of these means in 32 of the 36 games this season. In the Feb. 13 game versus Northern Colorado, MSU drew 12 walks, one shy of the single-game program record set in 2004.
