Last year,
Melinda Fischer was leading Cinderella. Her Illinois State University softball team needed a red-hot finish and a string of Missouri Valley Conference Tournament upsets to reach the NCAA Tournament. This year, the Redbirds arent exactly the 1962 Yankees, but the team enters NCAA Regional play with the confidence of having been there before.
Fischer, with more than 500 wins in her 16 seasons at Illinois State, likes her teams position in the six-team tournament. The No. 5-seed Redbirds meet tournament host and No. 2 seed Iowa at 2 p.m. in Thursdays second game. Top seed Notre Dame and No. 6 Western Illinois play in the opener at 11:30 a.m., while No. 3 South Carolina meets No. 4 DePaul in Thursdays third game.
Our experience in the NCAA Tournament last year, plus the experience of having faced four of the other five teams in our regional, have us confident, said Fischer, whose 35-16 Redbirds won the Valley regular-season and tournament titles this season.
Illinois State was 1-3 vs. Iowa this season. The Redbirds also played DePaul twice and Western Illinois once this season. In last years regional at Tucson, South Carolina knocked out the Redbirds with a come-from-behind 7-4 win in the final game.
The Missouri Valley Tournament a year ago was a starting point for us, said Fischer. In the NCAA, Nebraska beat us pretty good before we came back to beat Middle Tennessee and play a great game with South Carolina. All those experiences, plus this year, will help us.
This years experience includes 11 games against teams in the tournament for Illinois State.
When we played teams like Arizona State and Alabama early in the season, our kids were competitive, said Fischer. But really, it all went back to our (winter break) trip to Australia. Our team found a bond during that trip. Now, weve turned that bond into an air of confidence.
Its easier to be confident when your team has the likes of all-Missouri Valley Conference pitcher
Nicole Kurth (24-4, 1.24 ERA), plus all-conference hitters
Becky McMurtry and
April Schermann.
Kurth has won seven straight decisions and is 12-1 since the first week in April. She has won or saved all nine games during ISUs current win streak.
Weve seen pitchers from four of the teams in our regional and Nicole, in her own way, can stack up with any of them, said Fischer, whose team is riding a nine-game winning streak into the double-elimination NCAA Regional. She has had a terrific year and, several times, she has had to battle that much harder because she didnt have her best stuff. But she keeps on winning for us.
McMurtry, the Redbird third baseman, is fresh from earning Most Valuable Player honors at the Valley Tournament. She was 7-for-12 hitting (.583), drove in five and scored three of Illinois States 18 runs in the four-game sweep.
Schermann was among the nations leading hitters before a back injury sidelined her in mid-April. Still, she came back to hit .359 for the regular season and drive in 33 runs--tied for best on the team despite missing 12 games. Her glove at second base is a key to a Redbird defense which has committed just 46 errors compared to 74 by its opponents.
Really, everybody picked it up, offensively and defensively, when April was out, said Fischer. After a couple of games, that lineup really jelled. Becky has had a tremendous year because she has a lot of determination.
Fischer thinks balance is important in tournament play.
At the regional level, you see teams that might be strong hitting teams, or great pitching teams, said Fischer. I think its important to have balance to deal with any kind of team you see.
And shes glad her team has faced the enemies before.
We havent seen Notre Dame, and they are the No. 1 seed, but I think its a huge advantage for us that we have seen the other teams and weve been there before, said Fischer.
Famous for her tough early schedules, Fischer believes her team learned from those challenges this year. Sitting at 14-9 after a doubleheader loss at Iowa on March 27, the Redbirds were 21-7 the rest of the way, with four of those seven losses by one run and three of them taking extra innings.
Our schedule helped us gain confidence, said Fischer. Thats what is supposed to happen and this team has it.
