Montana returns to Texas

The Montana softball team, one week after playing in the UTEP Orange and Blue Classic in El Paso, will return to the Lone Star State for the Texas A&M Davis Diamond Classic.

The three-day, three-team tournament will feature the Grizzlies and host Aggies plus Louisiana Tech. Games will be played Friday through Sunday.

Next week the Grizzlies will host the four-day Montana Classic at Grizzly Softball Field in Missoula. They will be Montana's first home games since April 27, 2019.

Montana will play three games against Seattle on Thursday and Friday, three against Utah Valley on Saturday and Sunday.

The following week is the start of the Big Sky Conference schedule, with Montana opening at Portland State.

Schedule:

Friday: vs. Louisiana Tech, 11:30 a.m. (MT)
Friday: at Texas A&M, 2 p.m. (MT)
Saturday: vs. Louisiana Tech, 11:30 a.m. (MT)
Saturday: at Texas A&M, 4:30 p.m. (MT)
Sunday: at Texas A&M, 9 a.m. (MT)

At a glance (Montana): The Grizzlies are 4-10 after splitting a pair of games last weekend in El Paso. Montana had wins over UTEP and Incarnate Word, loses to No. 11 Arizona State and UTEP.

Big Sky Player of the Week Maygen McGrath, who went 7 for 14 with seven RBIs and six runs scored, helped the Grizzlies bat .314 at the tournament to up their league-leading batting average to .298.

Tristin Achenbach started three of four games at UTEP. She went 2-1 with two complete games and 26 strikeouts, with back-to-back 12 strikeout performances in wins against UTEP and Incarnate Word.

Montana ranks fifth in the Big Sky in ERA at 8.08. Weber State (3.78) and Sacramento State (4.11) are the only two Big Sky teams with ERAs better than 5.5 at this point of the season.

At a glance (Texas A&M): The Aggies are 13-3 and receiving votes in this week's ESPN/USA Softball top 25 poll. They have played 15 of their first 16 games this season at Davis Diamond, all 16 in Texas.

Texas A&M extended its winning streak to three with a home sweep of Texas Southern on Tuesday, winning five-inning games of 8-0 and 9-0.

The Aggies' three losses have all come by one run: 7-6 to Colorado State, 2-1 to Texas Tech and 3-2 to No. 19 Tennessee.

Texas A&M is batting .292 this season and has a stingy team ERA of 1.44. Makinzy Herzog is 5-1 with a 0.58 ERA. The staff has 113 strikeouts in 102 innings with just 20 extra-base hits allowed in 16 games.

Jo Evans, previously the head coach at Colorado State and Utah, has been at Texas A&M since 1997.

She has taken Texas A&M to the NCAA tournament 20 of the 23 full seasons she's been in College Station, the last 18, with trips to the College World Series in 2007, '08 and '17.

At a glance (Louisiana Tech): The Lady Techsters are 4-8 and will enter this weekend's tournament on a two-game losing streak.

Louisiana Tech split four games at its home tournament last weekend, sweeping Tarleton State and losing twice to Baylor. The Lady Techsters lost 4-0 at Stephen F. Austin on Tuesday.

Louisiana Tech won 45 games in 2019 and claimed both the Conference USA regular-season and tournament titles. It went 8-16 in last year's shortened season, with a 4-3 extra-inning loss to Montana.

The Lady Techsters are batting .209 through a dozen games and have a 3.60 ERA.

Series notes:

* Montana is playing in Texas for the second straight weekend and for just the second time in program history.

* Montana and Texas A&M will be playing for the first time on Friday.

* Montana is 1-0 against Louisiana Tech, last year's 4-3, 10-inning win at the Big Easy Classic in Metairie, La. The Grizzlies won it with a Cami Sellers RBI single in the top of the 10th.

* Montana is 1-0 against the SEC. The Grizzlies went to Fayetteville, Ark., last season and blanked the No. 23 Razorbacks 5-0.

Summary:

After three weekends of tournaments, the Montana softball team is batting .298, which leads the Big Sky Conference and ranks 63rd nationally out of 252 Division I softball-playing schools.

It's the best three-weekend start to a season in program history, notable for a team that historically warms up offensively as the weather does.

In three of the previous six years of the program's existence, the Grizzlies were batting .236 or lower through three weekends.

In 2017 Montana was batting .266, in 2019 it was .272, in 2016 it was .290, the previous high-water mark. That team finished the season with a batting average of .326, the Montana single-season record.

Junior shortstop Maygen McGrath is a big part of that heady team batting average that hovers just below .300. The reigning Big Sky Player of the Week is hitting .476, which leads the league.

McGrath leads the Big Sky in batting average and runs scored (17), is tied for first in doubles (4) and ranks second in hits (20), home runs (5), RBIs (19) and total bases (39).

But a team batting average does not one player make.

Cami Sellers is being Cami Sellers and batting .400. Kendall Curtis, after having her freshman year cut short last spring, is off to a .366 start.

She and McGrath both take seven-game hitting streaks into the weekend after Curtis went 7 for 13 over four games at UTEP.

The team's leading hitter in El Paso? That would be freshman Anna Toon, who batted .600, going 6 for 10. In those 10 at-bats she drove in six runs, second only to McGrath's seven.

Five of Toon's six hits and all six of her RBIs came in two games on Saturday, a 5-4 comeback win against Incarnate Word and a 14-13 loss to UTEP.

Getting the start at designated player and batting behind Sellers, McGrath and Curtis in the No. 5 spot in the order against UTEP, Toon got rolling with a single to center in the third.

She had an RBI double in the sixth, a three-run home run to left-center in the seventh that brought Montana within two at 14-12. It was her first collegiate home run.

Her big weekend has her batting .414 on the season, with a slugging percentage that comes in just below Sellers'. And she has just two strikeouts in 29 at-bats.

Pretty good for a freshman.

"She is pretty emotionally grounded in her at-bats," said coach Melanie Meuchel. "She has a very consistent approach and has a great swing and a good eye.

"She is enjoying every opportunity she is getting and taking advantage of it."

Montana is averaging a healthy 5.0 runs per game but its ERA checks in at 8.08 through 14 games. Teams are batting .361 against the Grizzlies, with 118 runs scored.

Tristin Achenbach was dominant in most of her innings last weekend. She had 12 strikeouts in back-to-back games against UTEP and Incarnate Word and had a 3.43 ERA for her three appearances.

The rest of the staff is young, all underclassmen. Two are freshmen, the other a sophomore who threw just 7 1/3 innings last season.

"We've seen some things we need to work on and we've gotten to work on those items," said Meuchel. "We are getting better in a couple little mechanical things that were a little bit off and will allow us to dominate our control on pitches.

"It's a competitive group that does not want to back down. They continue to fight for their team. They have a lot more in them and are willing to put in the work. I foresee some good things coming."

Now Montana heads to College Station, where highs will be in the low 80s Friday and Saturday, with cooler, damper weather forecasted for Sunday.

On Thursday evening Montana will get to practice at Davis Diamond, Texas A&M's $26.8 million softball facility that opened in April 2018.

"It's the best facility in the country," said Meuchel. "We're excited to play in that kind of venue against two very good teams, a very competitive SEC team and a Louisiana Tech team we saw last year that is a very strong mid-major. We have a lot of respect for them.

"We look forward to having a weekend in which we compete hard every inning. That's one thing we're starting to see with this team and the steps forward we're taking on a pretty consistent basis. It will be a fun weekend to compete together."

And when the Grizzlies make it home on Sunday night, they'll be able to look forward to doing something they haven't done in nearly 23 months: play a home game.

It's been a long, long time since Cami Sellers had that two-run home run in the bottom of the sixth to give her team a 4-2 win over Northern Colorado on 4.27.19.

"What's sitting on our mind is College Station, but we're really close to getting home," said Meuchel. "Once this weekend is over, it's going to be very energized."

Montana notes:

* Behind Maygen McGrath (.476), Anna Toon (.414), Cami Sellers (.400) and Kendall Curtis (.366), Montana has four of the Big Sky's top seven batting averages.

* Tristin Achenbach ranks eighth in the Big Sky in ERA (5.36) but leads the league in strikeouts with 57. That's 20 more than any other pitcher.

* McKenna Tjaden hit two home runs at UTEP last weekend. She had the big two-run shot in the bottom of the sixth that gave Montana a come-from-behind 5-4 win over Incarnate Word. The next day her solo shot in the top of the seventh pulled the Grizzlies within one in what would be a 14-13 loss to UTEP.

* Montana entered the season with a runs-allowed record of 13, which an opponent did three times between 2015 and '20. This season Arizona State has scored 17, Grand Canyon 16, Utah State 15 and UTEP 14.

* Tristin Achenbach entered the season with one game in her career with double-digit strikeouts: the Big Sky-record 16 she had against Carroll in 2019.

She had 10 or more for the first time against a Division I opponent when she struck out 12 in a 5-2 win over UTEP last Friday. Her next outing, against Incarnate Word, she had 12 again.

* Achenbach has 267 career strikeouts, which ranks second behind Michaela Hood's 388.

* Brooklyn Weisgram made her season debut at UTEP after missing the start of the season with an injury. She made one start in left field, one in right and had a single against UTEP on Saturday.

* Montana's 15 hits against UTEP on Saturday were a season high. The Grizzlies scored 13 times in that game while striking out just once.

* Montana had a streak of three straight games without an error snapped against Incarnate Word.

* Kylie Becker has scored multiple runs in four of the last five games. ... Maygen McGrath already has five games with multiple RBIs. She had 10 through her first two seasons. ... McGrath leads Montana in games with multiple hits (7) and RBIs (5).

* In one day (Saturday), McKenna Tjaden doubled her career home run total from two to four.

* On their seven-game hitting streaks, Maygen McGrath is batting .522, Kendall Curtis .478.

* Elise Ontiveros had her first collegiate extra-base hit on Friday, a double against Arizona State.

* Montana has used the same top of the order in all 14 games: Becker, Sellers, McGrath and Curtis. ... Sellers, at first, and McGrath, at short, are the only players who have started every game at the same defensive position.

Around the Big Sky Conference:

* No team in the Big Sky is at or above .500 at this point of the season. The closest is Idaho State at 4-5 and Weber State at 6-8.

* Sacramento State, at 6-11, has played the most games to date. Twelve of those games have come at home.

* Like Idaho State, Portland State has played just nine games.

* Montana tops the Big Sky in batting average at .298, followed by Southern Utah (.286) and Idaho State (.281). The Thunderbirds have 41 extra-base hits, 15 more than any other league team, with 21 home runs.

* The league leaders in ERA: Weber State (3.78), Sacramento State (4.11) and Idaho State (5.54).

Upcoming: The Grizzlies will host the Montana Classic at Grizzly Softball Field. The four-day event will begin with a doubleheader against Seattle on Thursday starting at 1 p.m.

Next Event

Players Mentioned

Tristin Achenbach

Kylie Becker

Kendall Curtis

Michaela Hood

Maygen McGrath

Elise Ontiveros

Cami Sellers

McKenna Tjaden

Anna Toon

Brooklyn Weisgram

University of Montana Athletics