"Payton Tidd put together a good day in the circle"

Quote from F$U softball head coach Lonni Alameda. My comment regarding Tidd was that she was "junk ball" pitcher and not a power pitcher. In my opinion Tidd is not the type of pitcher you can ride to the College World Series. Look at the pitchers for Oklahoma, Alabama, UCLA, Oregon, Florida, F$U, Arizona, Arizona State, etc who take their teams to the Series. Notre Dame does not have a pitcher on their roster like the pitchers on those teams. Those pitchers can pitch every game, everyday and be effective. Tidd would be a great complimentary pitcher to a starting big arm. F$U has a freshman pitcher, Kathryn Sandercock, who throws 66-67 and is presently 8-0. She is the type of pitcher that eventually takes you to the College World Series. Sandercock is from Bishop O'Connell in Virginia. Sandercock is the type of pitcher Gump has failed to sign. Sandercock pitched 2 innings on Friday in the win against Notre Dame facing the minimum six batters with while throwing only 16 pitches.

over her last 6 games, she is 5-1

she pitched 35+ innings allowing 8 earneed runs (1.6 era per 7 innings) including wins over Florida state, FIU, and Baylor with a complete game against FSU and a loss to Iowa in which she gave up no earned runs. During this time she had 42 Ks in 35 innings or 1.2 SO per inning. Earlier in the year she held the then #2 washington team to 2 earned runs over 5 innings in a win. Pretty good numbers for a freshman pitcher playing in the big time against some of the teams you mentioned. It will be very difficult to get a confederate kid to go the cold hinterlands of south bend where you cannot practice outdoors until mid to late March while the southern kids have been outdoors practicing legally or not all winter.

can you blieve we have played Duke, OK, OK State,

south carolina, washington, tennessee, ohio state, minnesota, baylor, FSU, Cal and iowa already - hard to make up a more difficult schedule. among the best (and in some cases the best) in the PAC 12, Big 12, BIG, and ACC/SEC. Got to give Gump credit for going after the best competition out there. With a couple of exceptions, we have played this schedule extremely well considering the early start advantages most of these teams have (I include Minnesota in that they have a indoor field to use and we do not.)

This is only Duke's second year playing softball.

Duke beat Notre Dame.

in our loss today 5-0 Tidd pitched last 2 1/3 innings w/

1 hit no runs and 2 SOs 0 Walks. plus i would expect us not to play all that well in our very first game outdoors to a team that has been outdoors for a couple of months plus duke gets to recruit the s/e where they are the premium school (considered by locals the top academic school in s/e) and in a sport that pays no money for professionals and getting into duke is a big deal.

Tidd no earned runs today. 2 runs scored on the 1 hit.

Runs charged to Holloway.

A big part of Notre Dame's pitching woes is that there is not one person on the coaching staff that has historically developed pitchers. Holloway is prima facie evidence this year. Tidd better have someone outside the program that can work with her.