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Improved offense has FAU confident With solid hitting to go with good pitching, the Owls open their bid for a CWS berth today.

By Marcus Nelson
Palm Beach Post

The past three seasons, Florida Atlantic Had the pitching to make it to the NCAA softball regionals, but no further.

This season, the Owls have an offense to go with their impressive pitching staff and those bats are the reason that FAU has its sights on winning the regional and advancing to the Women's College World Series.

"The key to how far we go is going to be our hitting," FAU senior pitcher Nikki Myers (35-6), 0.63 ERA) siad. "We've always had a good team. The key is hitting. If we put runs on the board, our pitching can hold them and get the job done. But we have to put runs on the board."

FAU is scoring 4.0 runs per game and Myers and freshman pitcher Candice freel anchor a staff that is allowing just 1.2 runs per game.

"Just after the season started, Nikki came up and said that it's going to be really fun having some runs to work with this year, and she's right," Owls coach Joan Joyce said.

The Owls (60-11) are seeded No. 1 in the Tallahassee regional and face No. 6 seed Chattanooga at 12:30 p.m. today.

The Moccasins (42-13) earned their bid by winning the southern Conference tournament.

"We match up pretty good against them," said Chattanooga coach Frank Reed.

We both have good hitting and good pitching. It will come down to who makes the fewest mistakes. Myers is as good as they come and Freel is throwing as good or better than Myers right now."

Chattanooga pitching coach Chris Sutcliffe previously pitched for the Owls, her career finishing after last season.

In other first-round games, third seeded Florida state (49-17) will face Auburn (38-25) and Alabama (46-19) will play Georgia Tech (47-16). The winner of the six-team double-elimination bracket advances to the Women's College World series in Oklahoma City set for May 23-27.