Auburn Softball Goes 5-1 Over Week 2 of the 2016 Season

The Tigers didn't come out of the weekend unblemished, but things still worked out fairly well for the ladies.

Week 2 began Wednesday morning with a road game against #15 Central Florida. Auburn picked up two runs in the first inning, and those were the only two runs scored for the whole game. That sounds bad after the hot bats of the first weekend, but UCF's ace pitcher was a 2015 All-American. Scoring two runs and shutting the Knights down in a 9am weekday game was a big accomplishment.

From there, the ladies moved a little further down in Florida to take part in the Michelle Smith PCF Invitational. There were multiple games over the course of the tournament, with the Tigers coming out 4-1 for the trip. It started Friday with 6-1 and 6-0 victories over Oklahoma State and South Florida respectively. The lone blemish was to James Madison on Saturday, who defeated the Tigers 3-2. Auburn staged a late rally, but just couldn't pull out the victory.

The runs were scarce in some of those early games, but after the loss to the Dukes, Auburn bounced back in a big way. They had to step right back on to the field following the James Madison game and you could tell they weren't thrilled with having been handed that first loss of the 2016 season. They put a beating on DePaul to the tune of 18-0 in five innings. That was followed by an 18-1 victory over Fordham Sunday morning to close out the tournament.

Auburn's pitchers had a good weekend, overall. The three runs in the Saturday loss was painful, but only allowing two other runs in the other four games is a great feat. Marcy Harper's complete game shut out of Central Florida on Wednesday was added to by freshman Makayla Martin's against USF and Lexi Davis' 5 inning shut out of DePaul. It definitely looks like the Tigers have a lot of talent on the mound and at the plate in 2016.