Griz embark on seven-game road trip

The Montana softball team is heading to Texas and New Mexico this week for a big seven-game road trip spread across a pair of tournaments.

The Grizzlies will play two games on Friday at UTEP's Dr. Diana Natalicio Memorial Tournament in El Paso, then get five games at New Mexico State's Troy Cox Classic on Saturday, Sunday and Monday.

Montana has never played more than five games as part of an early-season road trip in its history.

The Grizzlies opened their season going 1-4 last week at the GCU Kickoff Classic in Phoenix, topping Colgate 11-4 in their opener for their lone win of the season.

Montana will travel next week to California for CSU Bakersfield's Kathy Welter Classic and play four games, two against Pacific, two against the host Roadrunners.

The schedule:

Friday, 11 a.m. – vs. Manhattan (El Paso)
Friday, 2 p.m. – at UTEP (El Paso)
Saturday, 9 a.m. – vs. 18/17 Nebraska (Las Cruces)
Saturday, 2:15 p.m. – vs. Texas A&M-Corpus Christi (Las Cruces)
Sunday, 9 a.m. – vs. 18/17 Nebraska (Las Cruces)
Monday, 1 p.m. – at New Mexico State (Las Cruces)
Monday, 3:30 p.m. – at New Mexico State (Las Cruces)

Coverage: None of Montana's seven games will have video streaming available. Live stats will be available for all seven games.

At a glance (Montana): The Grizzlies opened the season going 1-4 at the GCU Kickoff Classic in Phoenix last weekend under first-year coach Stef Ewing.

After opening with a win over Colgate, Montana dropped games against Norther Illinois, Wichita State and two against host Grand Canyon.

The Grizzlies batted .279 across five games and had an ERA of 6.20.

Presley Jantzi opened her senior season with at least one hit in all five games, going 8 for 17 for the tournament. Anna Cockhill scored a team-high four runs.

At a glance (Manhattan): The Jaspers will be playing their season opener on Friday after having their games against Delaware State on Sunday postponed.

Manhattan went 13-37 a year ago and ended the season with an RPI of 263. The Jaspers tied for seventh in the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference with a 10-14 league record.

Manhattan was picked 12th out of 13 teams in this year's MAAC preseason coaches' poll.

Montana and Manhattan will be playing for the first time on Friday.

At a glance (UTEP): The Miners went 2-2 at home last weekend, sweeping a doubleheader against Kansas City, then losing twice to UC Santa Barbara while giving up 22 runs to the Gauchos.

UTEP posted a strong .394 team batting average through its first four games, pounding out 41 hits, 17 of them going for extra bases.

The team's pitching staff had an ERA of 6.71 with opponents batting .330.

The Miners went 26-21 a year ago, including a 6-0 home win over Montana as the Miners two-hit the Grizzlies. UTEP finished sixth in Conference USA with an 11-13 league record.

UTEP was picked seventh out of 10 teams in this year's preseason poll.

Montana is 1-2 all-time against UTEP, all three games being played in El Paso. The Grizzlies won 5-2 in 2021, then lost the teams' two most recent match-ups 14-13 and 6-0.

At a glance (Nebraska): The Cornhuskers, ranked No. 18 and 17 in this week's national polls, are 3-2 after opening their season last weekend at a high-level tournament in Clearwater, Fla.

Three of Nebraska's games came against ranked opponents, including its opener against No. 6 Tennessee, a 7-1 win behind standout pitcher Jordy Bahl, who threw a five-hitter.

Nebraska improved to 3-0 with five-inning victories over Southern Miss and Bethune-Cookman, then dropped ranked match-ups against No. 13 Texas Tech, 6-5, and No. 24 Mississippi State, 3-0.

Bahl, who famously played two national-championship seasons at Oklahoma before transferring back to her home state, took the loss against the Red Raiders.

All six runs she allowed against Texas Tech were unearned on four Nebraska errors. The Red Raiders scored fourth times in the sixth and twice in the seventh to rally back from a 5-0 deficit.

Nebraska is batting .311 through five games and has a team ERA of 1.18, with eight of its 13 runs allowed this season unearned.

Nebraska went 30-23 last season, a season that was played almost entirely without Bahl, who was lost for the year with a knee injury in the Cornhuskers' first game of the season.

Nebraska still finished fourth in the Big Ten with a 12-9 league record.

Montana is 0-2 all-time against Nebraska, the Cornhuskers winning 13-4 in 2015 in the Grizzlies' fourth game in program history and 15-4 last February in Las Cruces, a game Montana led 4-1 after one inning.

The Grizzlies still led 4-1 going into the top of the fourth before the Cornhuskers put up a 13-run half-inning, the most runs ever scored against Montana in an inning.

At a glance (Texas A&M-Corpus Christi): The Islanders are 2-3 after opening the season last weekend with five games at Sam Houston State's tournament in Huntsville, Texas.

Corpus Christi picked up wins over Bryant, 6-4, and Sam Houston, 4-2, batting just .218 as a team across five games while posting a decent 3.98 ERA.

The Islanders went 21-22 a year ago, tying for sixth in the Southland Conference at 9-15 in league. They were picked sixth in this year's preseason poll.

Montana and Texas A&M-Corpus Christi have never met on the softball field.

At a glance (New Mexico State): The Aggies are 4-2 after playing six home games last weekend at the New Mexico State Invitational.

NMSU twice defeated Colorado State and twice defeated Kansas City, while losing two times to UC Santa Barbara.

The Aggies scored at least six runs in each of their first six games and put up 47 runs overall on .389 hitting. They totaled 70 hits in six games, with 17 doubles and a dozen home runs.

New Mexico State ended opening weekend with a 3.76 ERA.

The Aggies went 30-25 last season, tying for third in Conference USA behind Liberty and Western Kentucky with a 13-11 mark.

New Mexico State was picked third in this year's preseason poll, behind Liberty and Western Kentucky again, collecting one first-place vote.

Junior outfielder Devin Elam and sophomore pitcher Desirae Spearman were voted to the Conference USA preseason all-league team.

Spearman was the CUSA Freshman of the Year and Player of the Year last season. She went 8-4 with a 3.15 ERA and batted .365 with 18 home runs and 43 RBIs.

Five-time WAC Coach of the Year Kathy Rodolph has been the coach at New Mexico State since 2004. First-year Montana coach Stef Ewing was on Rodolph's staff from 2016-18.

The Aggies advanced to the NCAA tournament in both 2017 and '18.

Montana is 0-3 all-time against New Mexico State, including an 8-0 loss in Las Cruces in the Grizzlies' first-ever game in 2015. Montana lost 6-3 to the Aggies in 2019 and 8-7 in eight innings last season.

In that game, Montana fell behind 7-0 after two innings but rallied back to tie it at 7-7 with a five-run top of the sixth. New Mexico State won it with an RBI single in the bottom of the eighth.

Summary:

Montana opened the Stef Ewing era at Grand Canyon last week in the splashiest way possible, thumping Colgate 11-4 and being one out away from winning it 8-0 in five innings.

It set a new record for runs in a season opener.

The Grizzlies pounded out 13 hits, their most in a game away from Missoula since late in the 2023 season and had eight hits with runners in scoring position.

Montana would drop its final four games in Phoenix as the quality of its opponents rose, from Northern Illinois to Wichita State and finally to Grand Canyon, twice.

After coming through with eight hits against the Raiders with runners in scoring position, the Grizzlies were just 5 for 22 in the same situation over the final four games.

"My takeaway from the weekend is that we can swing it," said Ewing. "As long as we have opportunities left to be able to swing the bat, I think we're in every game.

"But we have to be better with runners in scoring position. We could have had more quality at-bats in those situations."

Montana entered the Grand Canyon tournament in a unique position. Because of injuries, the team's four available pitchers were players who had never thrown a pitch in an NCAA Division I game.

The staff allowed an opponent batting average of .336 and finished the five games with an ERA of 6.20.

What stuck out to Ewing were the 18 walks allowed and the seven hit-by-pitches, which led to a staff WHIP of 2.11, a number that is not synonymous with winning.

"Our pitchers have to be able to attack the zone more," said Ewing. "We gave up a ton of free bases."

Between walks and hit-by-pitches, Montana allowed 25 base-runners to reach. The Grizzlies finished the weekend with 26 earned runs allowed.

"That tells me that every time we're walking somebody or hitting them, they are scoring," said Ewing. "We have to minimize that.

"If teams are going to score, we have to make them earn it by hitting their way on, not by us putting that many free base-runners on base. That's hard to battle back from. Our pitchers learned from that."

Three of the five players who hit better than .350 at Grand Canyon for Montana were freshmen.

Sveva Sweeney, getting one start at catcher and four at designated player, went 6 for 16 and got the game against Colgate rolling with a bases-loaded triple in the top of the first.

Anna Cockhill went 3 for 4 against Colgate in her Griz debut and finished 6 for 17 while making five starts at shortstop.

JoJo Christiaens went 3 for 7. She made one start at third base, one in left field.

"We had a lot of people who had breakout weekends and a lot of freshmen who contributed," said Ewing. "We have depth in our lineup to be able to hit one through nine."

Of Montana's four pitchers, Siona Halwani pitched two seasons at College of San Mateo, Brianna Lachermeier one at Otero College.

Grace Hardy made her pitching debut but is in her fourth year of playing college softball.

The only true newcomer to the college game was freshman Cameryn Ortega. Ortega started against Northern Illinois and against Grand Canyon on Saturday night.

Against the Lopes, who ranked 11th nationally in runs last season, she gave up three runs across the first two innings on four hits. She allowed only one more hit over GCU's final four innings of at-bats.

Her performance allowed Montana to be in a 3-1 game in the top of the seventh with two runners on and the potential go-ahead run at the plate. The player holding the bat: Presley Jantzi.

"We went out there and didn't have one pitcher who's pitched in a Division I softball game," said Ewing. "It was a huge learning experience for us, learning the adjustments we have to be able to make.

"Cam was great as a freshman and did a really nice job of settling in. Grace did a phenomenal job. We got Bri some experience and Siona had to carry the load for us."

Montana will take that experience and move forward to this weekend, one with a similar makeup as Grand Canyon. Some 50-50 games and some as the underdog.

"Our team knows we need quality at-bats, we have to play quality defense and our pitchers have to pump the zone. That's what we have to do to be in every game and stay in every game," said Ewing.

"Our biggest thing is we have to play quality softball more often. I think we played quality softball in three out of our five games in Arizona. We have to tick that up and be able to stay in every game."

Wichita State went 5-0 in Phoenix, outscoring its opponents 37-7. Grand Canyon went 5-1, the Lopes' only loss a 4-1 defeat at the hands of the Shockers.

In addition to playing three games against UTEP and New Mexico State on their home fields, Montana will get two games against the ranked Cornhuskers this weekend.

The Grizzlies are 1-18 all-time against ranked opponents, their lone victory a 5-0 win at No. 23/23 Arkansas in February 2020.

"That's what our pre-conference schedule is for," said Ewing. "It's mixed with some tough competition and ranked opponents because that's where we want to be. You have to play those teams to know.

"Where we're at right now, we're taking two steps forward and maybe taking one step back, but we're continuing to climb and continuing to get better."

Upcoming: A relatively light week, with four games over two days at CSU Bakersfield's Kathy Welter Classic.

Next Event

Players Mentioned

JoJo Christiaens

Anna Cockhill

Siona Halwani

Grace Hardy

Presley Jantzi

Brianna Lachermeier

Cameryn Ortega

Sveva Sweeney

University of Montana Athletics