State Continues Season-Ending Road Trip At #16 Florida
May 25, 2016 | Softball
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GAINESVILLE, Fla. - Having captured wins in five of its last six outings, the Mississippi State softball team will pack up its show and head to Gainesville, Fla., as the Bulldogs continue an eight-game season-ending road trip with a three-game set at 16th-ranked Florida on Saturday and Sunday at the Florida Softball Field.
MState (30-22, 10-13 SEC) and the streaking Gators (34-12, 13-5) will renew their series for the 23rd time with a 1 p.m. EDT Saturday afternoon doubleheader, before closing out the weekend with the Sunday afternoon series finale at 1 p.m. The game can be followed in progress via a live stats link at the official Internet home for the Mississippi State athletic department, www.MStateAthletics.com. Sunday's series bookend will also be broadcast live by WMSV 91.1 FM with Anthony Craven handling all the play-by-play duties.
Riding a wave of recent success in the series, the Maroon and White has captured victory in nine of the last 10 meetings with the Orange and Blue, including a two-game series sweep last season in Starkville. Florida's lone win in that time span came in MSU's last trip to Gainesville when the Gators salvaged its series with Mississippi State on a 6-1 triumph in the series finale. The squads have split 10 meetings in Gainesville right down the middle.
Picked to finish third in the SEC's Eastern Division in a preseason poll of the league's coaches, Florida has wreaked of success thus far into the campaign. On the shoulders of very strong upperclassmen, Florida posted victories in 13 of their first 15 match-ups in 2005 to burst onto the national scene.
The Gators have posted victories over seven nationally ranked squads this season, including both of the league's divisional leaders (Alabama, Georgia), as well as a pair of victories this past weekend over then-No. 6 Tennessee at home.
A balanced team on both sides of the ball, Florida is led at the plate by junior Lindsey Cameron who has posted team-bests in both home runs (11) and RBI (39) while hovering right under the .400 plateau (.396). The Gators are littered with base-reaching talent and, when not scoring with power at the plate, will make things happen on the base paths where Florida currently sports a 79 percent (94-for-119) success rate stealing bases.
From the circle, Florida has gotten a bulk of the innings from a duo of pitchers since the start of conference play. Sophomore righthander and Gainesville native Stacey Stevens (19-7, 2.06 ERA) has posted eight of UF's 13 league victories, while senior Mandy Schuerman (10-4, 1.60) has won five others. The four-armed Gator staff has yielded just a .234 opponent batting average this season, while posting a strikeout-to-walk ratio of more than 3-to-1 (156-to-52).
