The No. 5 Aggies were knocked down for the first time this season with a 1-0 loss to the Houston Cougars, Wednesday night. The Aggies have not fallen to an unranked squad in College Station in years. A&M is now 15-1 on the season as they prepare to host UTSA, Georgetown and Prairie View A&M for the Texas A&M Invite.
“It’s just really important for us to keep our confidence,” A&M head coach Jo Evans said. “It’s one game and a disappointing loss for us, no question. But it’s not the end of the world and it’s really important for us to have the maturity and leadership to be able to bounce right back. You can’t have one game be more important than the 15 games you played before so I think it’s really important for us to keep our heads on straight and then recognize that we’re going to hit some bumps every once in awhile but our responsibility is to make sure that’s one game and that we get right back on a winning track.”
Houston found a gap in the Aggies’ armor via inside pitches. A&M failed to cross home plate for the first time since April 9 of last year against No. 17 Tennessee. Looking forward to the last non-conference competitions of the season, this weekend is the Aggies’ last chance to hone skills before hopping into SEC play.
“Today we’re working on the inside pitch which [Houston] was giving us a hard time with last night,” sophomore infielder Kaitlyn Alderink said. “Hopefully we’ll go out this weekend, have a better approach at the plate so we’ll have more successive offensively than we did last night. This weekend we really want to come out and show that we’re the dominant team, because obviously when conference comes we’re going to be playing better competition. By coming out and dominating this weekend we’ll put ourselves in a good position and have confidence going into conference play.”
The Aggies are looking to bounce back and build momentum before SEC play starts next weekend against Mississippi State. Coach Evans said in situations like these, she is more concerned with the girls’ mentality than their physical play.
“We expect that every team’s going to give us a tough game,” Evans said. “Our challenge is just to bounce back from a tough lost last night after a really successful week and just to stay focus on getting better. I think that all these teams have film on us. I just want to see us do a better job with our approach to the plate and have a clearer idea of what our plan is and be able to execute that plan. I think if we can just really focus on quality at bats we’ll be able to string hits together and make some runs.”
First pitch against UTSA is slated for 3 p.m. Friday afternoon at the Aggie Softball Complex.
