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SB: HCU closes regular season slate with McNeese

Three-game SLC series with league-leaders features Saturday Senior Day



HCU Huskies (20-28, 9-12 SLC) vs McNeese Cowgirls (38-14, 18-3 SLC) HCU closes out its regular season slate by welcoming league-leading McNeese to Husky Field for a three-game weekend set. 

The two schools will start things off with a Friday twin-bill at 4 pm and 6 pm. Saturday's series finale at noon will represent "Senior Day", as HCU will recognize its lone senior, Avery Drake, with a short ceremony after the game. 

The Huskies lost their final non-conference game of the regular season on Tuesday to kick off the four-game homestand, falling to Tarleton 5-2. The Texans broke away from a 2-2 tie with the go-ahead run in the fifth and two insurance tallies in the seventh. The Huskies had seven hits from seven batters, and Ronni Grofman suffered the loss in relief. 

AB Garcia returned from a seven-game absence on Tuesday against Tarleton, and is now batting .425 on the season with a team-high 18 stolen bases. The NFCA Top 25 Freshman of the Year watchlist honoree is second in the league in hits, and first in runs, while collecting 18 multi-hit games this season. 

Haylie Savage is also second in the league in hits, tied with Garcia with 57 base knocks. She is second in the league in runs driven in with 41, and has 19 multi-hit games and 10 multi-RBI games. Her seven dingers leads the Huskies while hitting at a .358 clip on the season.

Senior outfielder Avery Drake is fourth in the league in hits with 56, just one shy of her two teammates. She has 15 multi-hit efforts while batting .341, and her 17 stolen bases heading into the weekend puts her at 39 for her career, fifth highest in school history and just three shy of fourth place. 

Kaicey Hagler is batting .255 with 28 RBI, second on the club. Jasie Roberts is third on the team with 22 RBI and has stolen eight bases, while Autumn Sydlik is second in homers with five. 

Grofman lowered her team-best ERA to 2.96 and is now 5-4 on the season. Lyndie Swanson is 9-8 with a 3.13 ERA on the season while Katy Janes is 6-11 with a 3.40 ERA heading into the weekend. 

McNeese has been off since last weekend, when it swept a three-game series at home against TAMUCC. The Cowgirls rebounded from the previous weekend's series loss in Hammond, as SLU took two of three to tighten the SLC race. 

The defending regular season champs feature a balanced offensive attack, with six players batting right at .290 or better. McNeese is sixth in the nation in stolen bases. 

Alayis Seneca leads the club with a .364 batting average and has 20 stolen bases, second on the team only to Reese Reyna, who has 21 bags and a .324 average at the plate. 

Erin Ardoin bats at a .304 clip with 16 stolen bases, while Mariana Torres hits .295 with two homers, 12 stolen bases and team-best 33 RBI. Crislyne Moreno leads the Cowgirls with five homers and has driven in 27 runs. 

Two hurlers highlight the staff for McNeese, one from each side of the circle. Senior southpaw Whitney Tate is 14-4 with a 1.57 ERA, 10 complete games and seven shutouts. Righthander Ashley Vallejo has a 15-8 ledger with a 2.37 ERA and has also tossed 10 complete games with five shutouts and 97 K's in 115.1 innings.

The Huskies currently sit in a three-way jumble for fifth place with Texas A&M-Corpus Christi and Lamar. McNeese and Southeastern go into the final weekend vying for the regular season title and top seed in next week's conference tournament, with the Cowgirls two games ahead of the Lions in the standings.

Spots three thru seven are still in limbo for everyone in the league with various scenarios for seeding still in play for the next week's conference tournament in Lake Charles, hosted by McNeese.

The entire conference will be in action this weekend with the exception of Nicholls, who finished their regular season against HCU last Friday and Saturday. 

Southeastern is in Natchitoches to face Northwestern State. TAMUCC hosts UIW and Lamar hosts Commerce in the other series this weekend.

If you can't make it out to the park, you can follow this weekend's action with all three games being streamed on ESPN+, or via LIVE STATS here at hcuhuskies.com.

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