Final road series upcoming

The Montana softball team will play its final Big Sky Conference road series of the season this week when it travels to Greeley to face Northern Colorado in a three-game set.

The Grizzlies and Bears will play a doubleheader on Friday beginning at 1 p.m. and a stand-alone game on Saturday, also at 1 p.m. The games will be played at UNC's Gloria Rodriguez Field on campus.

Montana will wrap up its regular-season schedule next week with a home series against Sacramento State. The six-team Big Sky tournament opens the following week in Ogden, Utah.

Montana at a glance: The Grizzlies are coming off a 3-2 homestand, which opened on Wednesday with a pair of shutout victories over Carroll. Over the weekend Portland State won two of three at Grizzly Softball Field, Montana's first home Big Sky series loss in more than two years.

Northern Colorado at a glance: When the Bears take the field on Friday, they will have played just two games over the previous 20 days, thanks to weather cancellations that cost the team one game against Portland State and its entire series last weekend at North Dakota.

Where they stand:

Montana (22-24, 8-7 BSC) is alone in fourth place in the Big Sky standings, in a mix of three teams with a mismatched number of games played. North Dakota is in third at 7-5 in league, Portland State is in fifth at 7-7. That group is chasing Weber State (11-4) and Sacramento State (10-5).

Northern Colorado (23-22, 5-6 BSC), in sixth place in the Big Sky, has played the fewest number of league games of anyone, at 11. After this weekend, the Bears will have played 11 of their 14 league games at home. Northern Colorado closes its season next week on the road at Weber State.

Series history: Montana has won seven straight against Northern Colorado to build a 7-2 series advantage. The Bears won two of three in Missoula in 2015, in the Grizzlies' first season. Montana swept at Greeley in 2016 and in Missoula last season. The Grizzlies have put up 59 runs in their seven wins.

Coverage: Options this weekend are limited to live stats and an imagination.

Weekend in review:

G1: Portland State 6, Montana 3 -- In a classic case of hitting them where they aren't, the Vikings used an entire series' worth of seeing-eye base hits to build a 5-0 lead through three innings. Alyssa Burk got it done from there, allowing a two-run home run in the third, a solo shot in the seventh.

G2: Montana 3, Portland State 2 (8) -- The Vikings missed possibly winning it by an inch when a deep drive in the top of the seventh hit the very top of the fence and remained in the ballpark. Montana won it in the bottom of the eighth when Kylie Hayton plated Tori Lettus on a walk-off infield single.

G3: Portland State 3, Montana 2 -- Trailing by a run going into the bottom of the seventh, the Grizzlies loaded the bases with two outs for Madison Saacke, who hit a 1-0 pitch deep to left, only to watch it get caught on the warning track, mere feet from turning into a walk-off grand slam.

Montana notes:

* All of Montana's pitchers except Michaela Hood made appearances during the Grizzlies' five-game homestand and pitched the team to a 1.65 ERA. Montana's season ERA dropped to 3.02, the best in the Big Sky, just ahead of Sacramento State (3.04).

* Haley Young, Maddy Stensby, who appeared in three of the five games, and Colleen Driscoll each picked up a win. Add Tristin Achenbach and her 0.00 ERA in two appearances to the mix, and Montana held Carroll and Portland State to a .205 batting average, with 24 strikeouts against just three walks.

* Montana batted .312 at home last week, with Ashlyn Lyons going 8 for 16, Delene Colburn 6 for 12 (with six runs, five RBIs and six walks, all team highs). Jessica McAlister had five hits, Madison Saacke and Gabby Martinez four.

* Montana out-hit Portland State on the weekend, .273 to .235, but still dropped two of three. More than half of the Vikings' 19 hits (10) went for extra bases. Sixteen of the Grizzlies 21 hits in the series were singles.

* Delene Colburn's eight-game hitting streak came to an end in Sunday's finale, but she had three walks in the game to extend her streak of reaching base to 13, matching the season high that Ashlyn Lyons set earlier this year.

* Madison Saacke had at least one hit in each of the games against Portland State and has a hit in seven of the last eight games in which she's played.

* Ashlyn Lyons has had multiple hits in eight of Montana's last 10 games to raise her batting average to a team-best .369. In going 2 for 2 with a double on Sunday -- with two hit-by-pitch -- Lyons made it 50 times in her career with multiple hits.

* Montana's home series loss last weekend was its first in league since Idaho State won two of three in Missoula in 2016.

* It's been hot or cold for Montana on the road in league. The Grizzlies went 3-0 at Idaho State, 0-3 at North Dakota and 3-0 at Southern Utah.

* Despite committing four errors in three games against Portland State, Montana continues to lead the Big Sky in team fielding percentage (.969).

* Ashlyn Lyons (.369) and Delene Colburn (.368) rank third and fourth in the Big Sky in hitting percentage. Sacramento State's Zamari Hinton (.393) and Nene Alas (.370) rank first and second.

* Michaela Hood (2.78) ranks fourth, Colleen Driscoll (2.82) ranks fifth and Maddy Stensby (3.29) ranks seventh in the Big Sky in ERA. Of those in the top 10, Driscoll has the best strikeout-to-walk ratio of 3.64. She has a WHIP (walks and hits per inning pitched) of 1.21.

The state of Montana:

To read that Montana scored just eight runs in three games off a below-average pitching staff (Portland State ranks sixth in the Big Sky in ERA at 5.21) last weekend might lead someone who wasn't at the games to think the Grizzlies struggled at the plate. That's not even close to being right.

The Grizzlies had 21 hits in the series and had maybe the same number of balls that were hit hard but turned into outs. If eight runs in three games sounds passive, check the balls. They got rocked.

"I felt like we connected with a lot of balls and drove some balls. We just had a lot of hard-hit outs," said coach Melanie Meuchel. "We had good plate presence. It felt like we were locked in.

"It maybe wasn't the run production we needed or wanted, but we gave ourselves a lot of opportunities and were able to get to hitters in the lineup that you want to get to."

It was an unlucky weekend offensively that could have turned on a few inches, in either direction.

In game 2, Montana was clinging to a 2-1 lead when Alexis Morrison sent one to deep left with a runner on second in the top of the seventh. It still defies belief that the top of the chain-link fence kept the ball in play, but it did, setting up the Grizzlies' walk-off win in the eighth.

And game 3 was detailed above, how Madison Saacke's two-out blast with the bases loaded in the bottom of the seventh in a one-run game stayed in the park by maybe a couple of feet.

Portland State was that close to sweeping the series, and Montana was that close to winning two of three.

Now Montana heads to Greeley to face a Bears team that might be well rested or rusty, or maybe something in between.

Northern Colorado dropped two of three at Idaho State the first weekend of April, then lost two at home to Portland State two weeks ago, with the other game lost to weather. Last weekend's series at North Dakota was cancelled days in advance because of field conditions in Grand Forks.

The Bears' last win came on April 6 and enter the series on a four-game losing streak.

"It's not an expected time of the year when you would have a full weekend off and have two weeks without competition, but that's how it turned out," said Meuchel.

"It's hard to know if that's going to be a good thing or a bad thing. Sometimes rest and recovery at this time of year can be good. But you also haven't seen live pitching by an opposing player, so it's hard to know. We just need to be prepared on our side and keep attacking like we did last weekend."

Northern Colorado, picked last in the preseason coaches' poll, has been one of the Big Sky's biggest surprises this season. The Bears matched last season's win total of 20 by March 23 and have done it with one of the league's top offenses.

UNC is batting .276 this season and ranks second only to Weber State in runs scored, with 50 more crossing home plate than Montana this spring in one fewer game played. The Bears only have 24 more hits than the Grizzlies but have 46 more that have gone for extra bases.

Combine that with a sub-4 ERA of 3.86, and it's no wonder Northern Colorado is eyeing the Big Sky tournament.

Montana faced Alyssa Burk twice last weekend and will likely go up against 15-game winner Valerie Vidal twice in Greeley. Vidal ranks second in the Big Sky in wins, third in strikeouts and has a 2.87 ERA.

Vidal only lasted two innings in her one start in Missoula last spring, a 9-4 Montana victory. She also allowed three runs in 3 2/3 innings of relief the next day in Montana's 11-5 win.

Around the Big Sky Conference:

With two weekends of league series remaining, Weber State, at 11-4, is the lone team to have clinched a tournament spot, which will be played on the Wildcats' home field in two weeks. Weber State, coming off a home sweep of Idaho State, is at Portland State this weekend, then home for Northern Colorado.

Sacramento State won three low-scoring, one-run games at home last week over Southern Utah and is a lock for the tournament at 10-5.

Standings:

Weber State (11-4, .733)
Sacramento State (10-5, .667)
North Dakota (7-5, .583)
Montana (8-7, .533)
Portland State (7-7, .500)
Northern Colorado (5-6, .455)
Idaho State (5-10, .333)
Southern Utah (3-12, .200)

This week's series: UM at UNC, SUU at ISU, WSU at PSU, UND at SAC

Next week's series: SAC at UM, ISU at UND, UNC at WSU, PSU at SUU

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Players Mentioned

Tristin Achenbach

Delene Colburn

Colleen Driscoll

Kylie Hayton

Michaela Hood

Tori Lettus

Ashlyn Lyons

Gabby Martinez

Jessica McAlister

Madison Saacke

Maddy Stensby

Haley Young

University of Montana Athletics