The No. 13 Texas A&M softball team will host the Texas A&M Invitational this weekend.
The Aggies (12-4) will play at 3 p.m. Friday against Connecticut (0-5) and at 5:15 against Wisconsin. On Saturday, the Aggies will play these two teams again and conclude the weekend against Texas A&M Corpus Christi (3-11) at 12:15 p.m. Sunday.
The Aggies had narrow losses against No. 14 Arizona and No. 11 Nebraska at the Mary Nutter Classic last weekend and finished with a 12-0 victory against Cal State Northridge.
Aggie softball head coach Jo Evans is only two wins away from her 1,000th career victory. Although Evans isn’t focused on this milestone, she said it would be great to achieve it at home.
“Anytime you get 1,000 wins, I’d be perfectly happy to do it, but to do it [at home] is certainly meaningful,” Evans said. “[Texas A&M] is a place where I have fallen in love with and have had lots of fond memories here.”
Evans said the tournament will be an opportunity for her team to improve on last weekends’s performance.
“I expect us to win [the Texas A&M Invitational],” Evans said. “I expect us to shore up a few things defensively and offensively. I thought we had some bright spots in the [Mary Nutter Classic] and had opportunities to win [all] five games.”
Senior outfielder Cassie Tysarczyk went 1-2 with an RBI against Arizona in the tournament and catcher Nicole Morgan was 3-3 with a run scored and an RBI. Morgan said she was ready to play with home-field support.
“I feel that the venue doesn’t matter, but the one thing that matters the most is probably the 12th Man,” Morgan said.
Tysarczyk said she is excited to play teams that the Aggies don’t customarily play.
“I feel that this invitational is going to be really fun for us because we’re playing teams we haven’t played since I’ve been here,” Tysarczyk said. “Wisconsin probably has some pretty cold weather up there, so I know that they travel a lot in the beginning of their season – same thing with UConn as well.”