Griz return to league play

The Montana softball team, which has won nine of its last 11 games, will resume its Big Sky Conference schedule this week when it plays a three-game series at Sacramento State.

The Grizzlies (14-24, 4-2 BSC) and Hornets (24-14, 3-3 BSC) are scheduled to play a doubleheader on Friday starting at 1 p.m. (MT). Saturday's finale has a scheduled first pitch of noon (MT).

* Rain is forecasted for much of the weekend in Sacramento and could force changes to the schedule.

Montana, which wrapped up a 14-game homestand with a sweep of MSU Billings on Tuesday, will be playing its first road games since March 15.

The Grizzlies will have five more road games next week, with a doubleheader at Utah on Wednesday, then play at Weber State on Friday and Saturday.

Montana will conclude the regular season with a home series against Idaho State on Saturday and Sunday, April 25-26.

Coverage: Montana's games at Sacramento State will be streamed on ESPN+.

Montana storylines:

* The Grizzlies are tied with Idaho State and Northern Colorado atop the Big Sky standings through two weekends of league action. All three teams are 4-2.

It's the first time since 2022 that Montana has four wins through its first two Big Sky series and only the fourth time in program history.

* Montana's four league wins are twice as many as the Grizzlies had the last two seasons combined, when the Grizzlies had back-to-back seasons of 1-14 in league.

* Montana went 9-5 on its 14-game homestand. After opening with three losses to Pacific, the last two games being decided by a single run, the Grizzlies went 9-2.

That included a seven-game winning streak, the team's longest since 2019, with three-game sweeps of Seattle and Portland State, then a series-opening shutout of Northern Colorado.

Montana's offense flourished at home, with the Grizzlies batting .332 over 14 games and averaging 6.9 runs per game. Montana had an ERA of 4.95 during its homestand.

Montana's Game 1 victory over Portland State on March 28 was its 100th at Grizzly Softball Field. A win in Game 2 ensured Montana would snap a 19-series Big Sky losing streak that dated back to 2022.

Montana's 10-0 Game 1 win over Northern Colorado snapped the Grizzlies' nine-game losing streak to the Bears and was the largest margin of victory in a shutout of a Division I opponent in program history.

It was Montana's largest margin of victory over a Big Sky opponent since 2022, a 19-8 win at Southern Utah.

* Anna Cockhill extended her hitting streak to 12 games with a first-inning home run in Game 1 against MSU Billings on Tuesday.

That tied for the sixth-longest hitting streak in program history and was the longest for Montana since 2021. Cockhill went 0 for 2 in Game 2 as her streak came to an end.

Cockhill was batting .284 when her hitting streak started. She is now batting .333.

Cockhill batted .283 as a freshman, while starting all 50 games, with one home run and 14 RBIs. As a sophomore she is hitting .333 with eight home runs and 32 RBIs.

Cockhill's eight home runs are the most for a Grizzly since 2022, when Maygen McGrath hit 17 and Cami Sellers added nine.

* Cockhill added stolen base No. 10 of the season on Tuesday, giving her 37 for her career after collecting a program-record 27 as a freshman last season.

She is now only two behind Gabby Martinez's program record of 39, which Martinez set while playing from 2015 to '18, the first four seasons of the program.

* Cockhill is batting .405 with runners in scoring position this season. … Mackenzie Bekofsky has a team-high 18 hits with runners in scoring position. She is 18 for 50 (.360) in that situation.

* Montana has hit 29 home runs this season, already the fifth-most in program history. The program record is 43, hit by the 2022 team. The Grizzlies hit 21, 20 and 20 home runs the last three seasons.

* JoJo Christiaens and Kailee Mejia both closed out the homestand with red-hot bats.

Christiaens went 5 for 9 in the finale against Northern Colorado and in Tuesday's doubleheader with MSU Billings, with eight runs batted in and six runs scored.

She hit a grand slam against the Bears, the 16th in program history, then added a three-run home run against the Yellowjackets.

Christiaens' four career home runs have all come since March 23.

Mejia missed the first month and a half of the season with a broken foot. Since making her collegiate debut on March 23, she is batting .417.

Over Montana's last three games, she went 6 for 9. She hit her first collegiate home run in Game 1 against MSU Billings.

* Carah Sweet was 0-5 with a 5.38 ERA on March 22. Between March 23 and April 7, she went 5-1 and lowered her ERA to 4.04.

She threw complete-game shutouts against both Portland State and Northern Colorado, the first Grizzly to post a pair of Division I shutouts in a season since Tristin Achenbach in 2020.

* Montana has 106 extra-base hits this season. Among Big Sky teams, only Idaho State has more. The Grizzlies had just 83 last season over 50 games while batting .227 for the season.

* Grace Lopez ranks third in the Big Sky in batting average at .413. She ranks fourth in on-base percentage (.475), is tied for third in runs scored (33) and is tied for fourth in doubles (13).

At a glance (Sacramento State):

* The Hornets are 24-14 on the season largely because of an excellent pitching staff. The Hornets have an ERA of 2.54. That leads the Big Sky and ranks 14th nationally.

* Senior Lafulafu Malepeai, who played two seasons at College of San Mateo, leads the Hornets offensively. She is batting .410 and has 13 home runs and 36 RBIs.

She has struck out only seven times in 117 at-bats and leads the Big Sky in slugging (.821) and on-base percentage (.521), home runs (13) and walks (27) and is tied for the league lead in RBIs.

* In the circle, all three pitchers who have appeared in 14 or more games have an ERA lower than 3.00. All three joined the Hornets after beginning their college careers at other schools.

Senior Danyelle Leone is 4-2 with a 1.63 ERA and .218 opponent batting average. She is in her second season at Sacramento State after playing two years at Utah Tech.

Junior Alexa Ortiz is 9-6 with a 2.58 ERA and .215 opponent batting average. She is a second-year Hornet after spending one year at CSUN (Cal State Northridge).

Senior Kennedie Bacon is 6-5 with a 2.81 ERA. She is in her second year at Sacramento State after previously pitching at Grand Canyon and College of San Mateo.

* The Hornets have allowed only 11 home runs this season – one every 23 innings – and have held their opponents to a batting average of .246.

* Sacramento State got off to a fantastic start to the season, opening 14-2 and allowing four or fewer runs in 18 of its first 19 games.

* Against common opponents with Montana, the Hornets went 2-0 against Saint Mary's with two shutouts, lost 4-2 to Grand Canyon and went 3-0 in games against Pacific and Santa Clara.

* Sacramento State opened league going 1-2 at Northern Colorado, allowing 19 runs, 15 of them earned. The Hornets lost 8-5, won 10-2 and lost 9-1 in five innings against UNC's Anna Wilming.

* Sacramento State last week played at Weber State and went 2-1. After opening with a 5-2 loss, the Hornets won 14-0 in five innings and 5-2 in eight innings.

* After hosting Montana this weekend, the Hornets play a huge series at Idaho State, then get Portland State at home.

Series history:

* Montana is 6-32 all-time against Sacramento State with 14 straight losses and only 27 runs scored in those 14 setbacks.

* The Grizzlies have not won a regular-season game against the Hornets since the 2018 season, a streak of 20 consecutive losses.

* Montana is 2-24 against Sacramento State in the teams' last 26 overall match-ups, those two wins coming at the 2021 Big Sky tournament in Ogden behind the arm of Tristin Achenbach.

* Montana is 2-14 against the Hornets in Sacramento, with 10 straight losses. Both wins came in the Grizzlies' NCAA tournament season of 2017, both by 3-2 scores.

This week in the Big Sky Conference:

* Montana tries to snap a 14-game losing streak against the Hornets with a three-game series in Sacramento.

* The Big Sky's top two offensive teams, Idaho State and Northern Colorado, meet up in Greeley for what should be a fun series between two of the three teams atop the Big Sky standings.

* Weber State, which went 1-2 at Idaho State and 1-2 at home against Sacramento State, travels to Portland for a series against the Vikings, who have one league win, last week at Idaho State.

Upcoming: More road games, with a doubleheader on Wednesday at Utah before a Friday-Saturday series at Weber State.

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Players Mentioned

Mackenzie Bekofsky

JoJo Christiaens

Anna Cockhill

Grace Lopez

Kailee Mejia

Carah Sweet

University of Montana Athletics