April 26, 2011
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ATLANTA – The No. 20/20 Georgia Tech softball team (39-8) looks for its sixth 40-plus win season in the last seven years when it hosts Mercer (26-22) Wednesday in a doubleheader at Mewborn Field. Game one will begin at 5 p.m.
The Yellow Jackets are 46-13 all-time against Mercer, but these two teams have not met since the 2009 season when Tech was a 4-1 winner at the Buzz Classic.
Georgia Tech has won 32 of its last 36 games and was ranked 14th in the most recent NFCA/NCAA RPI. The Jackets have won an ACC record 22 consecutive conference series’ and will look to extend that streak this weekend at Boston College.
Junior Kelsi Weseman continues to lead the team and ACC in nearly every offensive category. She is batting .433 with 45 runs scored, 14 doubles, two triples, 18 home runs, 51 RBI, a 1.000 slugging percentage, a .553 on-base percentage, 20 walks and 14 hit by pitches. Last weekend against Virginia, Weseman legged out her 47th career double breaking Jen Yee’s school record.
The Jackets are hitting .329 as a team and every member of the starting lineup is batting at least .295. Additionally, five players have hit 10 or more home runs as the Jackets have now gone deep 92 times and are on pace to break last season’s school record of 118. Tech has more than doubled the next closest teams in home runs as Boston College and North Carolina have each hit 43.
After Weseman, freshman Alysha Rudnik is second on the team with 16 home runs. Senior Kristine Priebe, junior Jessica Sinclair and sophomore Hope Rush have 12 round-trippers apiece. That quintet ranks first, second and tied for fourth, respectively, in the league.
On April 13, sophomore Caitlin Jordan had just a handful of at bats but an injury to Priebe saw Jordan come off the bench and the rest is history. Jordan has hit safely in each of those six games, including 3-for-3 with a home run in that game against No. 4 Georgia. She is batting .667 (14-for-21) over that stretch with eight runs scored, a double, six home runs and 10 RBI. She is slugging 1.571 and has a .682 on-base percentage. Jordan hit three home runs in a game last weekend against Virginia to tie a school record. Savannah Brown is the only other Yellow Jacket to have accomplished that feat and she did it twice in 2007.
Freshman Ashley Thomas is also on a six-game hitting streak and has batted .435 (10-for-23) with six runs scored and four stolen bases in that span. Thomas was hitting .080 in March but has worked her average up to its current .295 in six weeks while starting all but three games this season at second base.
Senior Kristen Adkins continues to lead the Yellow Jackets in the circle as she is 18-5 with a 1.42 ERA and .200 opponent’s batting average. Adkins has five complete game shutouts and 127 strikeouts in 143.1 innings. She recently fanned a career-high 11 batters in a three-hit shutout of UVA. Sophomore Hope Rush is 11-3 with a 2.55 ERA while freshman Lindsey Anderson is 10-0 with a 2.31 ERA, .154 opponent’s batting average and 95 strikeouts in 72.2 innings. In ACC games, Anderson is 5-0 with a 0.78 ERA.
