THE FLATS – Senior 3B Mallorie Black has been named the No. 2 third basemen in the nation by Softball America in its recent player rankings for the month of March. Black has spearheaded the Georgia Tech softball (14-7, 3-0 ACC) offense all season and is currently leading the ACC in home runs (8), runs scored (26), slugging % (1.016) and OPS (1.576) through 21 games.
Black is one of just five players across all of Division I with a slugging % over 1.000 after already setting career-bests for doubles (9) and home runs (8) in a single season despite playing in less than half of the games in which it took her to set her previous records. She is at or near the top of the ACC in all major offensive categories: 8th in batting average (.475), 9th in on base % (.560), second in hits (29), third in RBI (23) and second in doubles (9).
She is tied with her teammate, Madison Dobbins, for the sixth most home runs in the country and owns the eighth most doubles across the country. Her 62 total bases are the most by any 3B in the country, coming in at fourth overall.
It took only 16 games for Black to reach her then-career best home run total for a season (7), the fastest a Yellow Jacket has reached 7 home runs in a season since All-American and Georgia Tech Hall of Famer Jen Yee in the 2010 season. The Cumming, Ga. native is in the midst of a career-best 18-game on-base streak dating back to the first weekend of the season.
This is the latest in a string of accomplishments for Black, who earned her first ACC Player of the week honor on Feb. 20, following her incredible offensive performance at the Shriners Children’s Clearwater Invite, where she posted .727 batting average (eight for 11), two doubles, a home run, four RBI, two walks and a team-leading six runs scored against current No. 3/4 LSU, No. 6/11 Stanford, Northwestern (RV) and Minnesota.
She followed that with another banner weekend at the I-75 Challenge, going .500 over the course of seven games while driving in 12 runs and scoring 10 thanks to four home runs, three doubles and six walks.
Last week, in the first ACC series of the season, Black went five for nine (.556) with three doubles, a home run, five RBI and five runs scored across the three-game run rule sweep of Pitt, Tech’s first run rule sweep of an ACC opponent in program history.