THIBODAUX, La. – After battling it out with two of the Southland Conference's top teams over the last two weekends, the Nicholls State University softball team will hit the road for a three-game series against last-place Incarnate Word, starting Friday with a 1 p.m. doubleheader.
The series will wrap up on Saturday with a single game, also scheduled to start at 1 p.m. The game times were moved around due to the threat of inclement weather. Live stats for all three games can be accessed on geauxcolonels.com.
In its last two conference series, Nicholls (22-15, 8-7 SLC) went 3-3 versus a pair of first place teams, falling two games to one at Central Arkansas before winning the series against McNeese State at home. With the split, the Colonels remain in sixth place in the Southland standings, two games behind Lamar and one game ahead of Texas A&M-Corpus Christi. The top six teams make the Southland Conference Tournament.
In conference games, Nicholls posts a .311 batting average and is scoring 4.9 runs per contest.
Haley Stevenson had led the Colonels in batting for most of the season, however,
Brooke Morris has been on a hot streak as of late and now leads the team with a .472 mark in conference and a .376 clip for the season. Morris was a perfect 4-for-4 in Wednesday's loss at No. 22 South Alabama.
Stevenson is just four points behind at .373 and is one of five Colonels batting over .300 on the season. Freshman
Payton Gremillion is third at .358,
Alexis Huss is batting .321 and
Haley Parkerson is at .315. Over the last 10 games, Parkerson is hitting at a .406 average, while Morris is at an astounding .457.
UIW (8-29, 2-13 SLC) recently got on the right track after losing 14 consecutive games. The Cardinals closed out their Southland series last weekend with two wins against Abilene Christian, which was their first conference wins of the year, and added two more victories on the road against Prairie View A&M on Tuesday.
At the plate, Taylor Johnson carries a 15-game hitting streak into the series and leads the team with a .382 batting average. As a team, UIW is batting .243 while their opponents are hitting at a .352 clip.
Kristen Hebert heads the pitching staff with a 5-13 record and a 4.20 ERA. She has 12 complete games this season and a team-best 47 strikeouts.
