It's good to play tough close games like this early in the season. It's a long tough road to OKC.
A few thoughts:
-- we're never gonna be a buttoned-up defense under White; he values hitting over fielding (I can't blame him). So we are gonna have some adventurous games. This one seemed especially bad on the defensive side.
-- I thought our pitching was great - we gave up one earned run all night.
-- We had some big hits in key moments, but I didn't really like our approach at the plate all night. Canady's elite, so it's gonna be a battle. But we were way too aggressive at anything middle up all night, and that played right into her strength as a riseball pitcher. We have to spit on that early in counts and make her throw strikes up in the zone. Her change is devastating - can't let her get to two strikes easily or it's over. I hope we learn from that for later in the season.
--Harping on the above again, we even fucked this up with our bunts. Late in the game, we tried to sac bunt Bella over to third with no outs. The whole stadium knows we are likely bunting, so we have to know Stanford's gonna go up in the zone to try to get us to pop up a bunt. That's just what we did. Mia absolutely has to lay off anything that looks middle up there. She did the #1 thing you absolutely cannot do in that spot. Was she coached at all on that?
--I didn't know leaving early was now reviewable. That's gonna be quite interesting as the season goes on.
--Hunter needs to play more.
--Atwood is a fucking monster at the plate. Just unreal. She's not a great blocker, but see my first point.
--Even though we lost, it was a great game to watch. Pretty nerve racking.