Although the weekend concluded with a snapped 11-game win streak, as some sloppy play and quiet bats finally caught up with the Jumbos, the softball team is actually in a good place right now.
The loss, coming in the second half of Sunday's doubleheader against Western Connecticut, couldn't have mattered less to the Jumbos' postseason aspirations, and does little to diminish what the team has accomplished so far.
After returning from the Sun West Tournament in California with a 4-8 record, the squad has turned that clip into a 15-9 record, winning 11 straight, including nine of 10 games in the last eight days.
Saturday's sweep of Bowdoin gave Tufts a 2-0 record in the NESCAC East, tied with Trinity for the top spot in the division. And while many teams have yet to cross the divisional line, the Jumbos are the only team with a perfect mark in both the NESCAC East and West, courtesy of a sweep of Williams on Apr. 2. The wins do not count towards seeding for the playoffs, but they make Tufts the only NESCAC team to have bested the defending champions, doing it twice on the same afternoon with a 6-4, 4-1 pair of wins on April 2.
"I think we're in a good position right now [in the league]," sophomore Danielle Lopez said. "We kind of have a bulls-eye on us because we were good last year, and we probably have teams gunning for us, but we're not as focused on it. We're looking at fielding the next ground ball and fielding it cleanly, and we haven't really had a chance to look at the [NESCAC] standings."
Softball has historically had less league parity, at least in terms of postseason wins, than many other sports. Since the tournament's inception in 2001, Tufts and Williams have split the five NESCAC titles between them, with the two squads facing one another in the three most recent.
Trinity has jumped to a 15-3 (2-0 NESCAC East) start this season, and despite its two division wins coming over a struggling 2-9 Colby team, they may be the Jumbos' closest East challengers this season. In the West, Williams will likely claim the division title and defend its back-to-back league titles, where it may get a chance to avenge last Sunday's losses to the Jumbos.
While Tufts' post-California success is hard to deny, this isn't quite the kind of the Jumbos are used to. Last season, the team largely coasted to a 25-6 regular-season record, powered by its overwhelming offense, which set a new Tufts record for team home runs with 42, just six shy of the NCAA Div. III record, and crowned a new single-season home run champ in departed senior co-captain Courtney Bongiolatti (14). The Jumbos spent much of the season with a large bulls-eye on their backs, with every league team looking to unseat them, and Williams finally succeeding in the finals of the postseason tournament.
And despite Lopez's nine home runs this season, which already surpasses her total of eight last year and puts her on pace to near or break Bongiolatti's mark, the 2006 team features a less powerful offense. With the infusion of freshman speed at the top of the order, the team has relied more on slaps and bunts, and less on long balls from a slightly diminished power-hitting middle lineup.
The second half of the Bowdoin doubleheader, a 13-0 drubbing of the Polar Bears fueled by a pair of three-run homers, was only the fourth time all season, and the second since returning from California, that the Jumbos have availed themselves of the mercy rule, ending the game in six. While it showed the kind of offense this team is capable of - and the kind that was almost a norm last season - it was an exception to the rule this year.
This week also saw a nine-inning 1-0 win over Wellesley last Tuesday, in which Tufts squeaked out only two hits and the winning run came in on a bases-loaded walk. The team managed just three hits in a 4-1 win over Western Conn. in Sunday's opener, and was helped along by two costly Colonial errors.
"I think we haven't entirely proved ourselves or that we're going to kill everyone," senior co-captain Jess Barrett said. "I think everyone wants to beat us - they know what we did last year and they've seen what we've been doing this year - but it's not quite the same [as last season]."
With fewer big hits to count on, the Jumbos need to protect their leads in the field, something they have had some trouble with this season. The team averages almost two errors a game, and has a .938 team fielding percentage, with no one in the infield above .955. Those numbers actually put them in the middle of the pack in NESCAC, but costly fielding errors have contributed to the 26 unearned runs of Tufts' opponents, out of a total of 87 surrendered.
"I said from the beginning that I thought we had the players to make it happen, and it was just a matter of making sure we come out every day and play," coach Cheryl Milligan said. "To some extent, we have, and we've gotten by by the skin of our teeth. We do need to be better; if we don't get better by the playoffs, we're going to get killed.
"And we will get better, I really believe that," Milligan continued. "Playing as ugly as we've been playing [in the field], we're not giving up that many runs, and we're certainly coming up bigger when we need to. Are we the team to beat? I don't know. I do know that if we don't go out and play, we'll get beat, and that's motivating us to get better right now."
