After the Terrapin softball team took two of three from Virginia Tech last weekend, coach Laura Watten insisted an NCAA Tournament berth would work itself out if the team kept winning games.
But after the Terps (25-17, 3-8 ACC) dropped yet another game to Towson on Wednesday, Watten’s optimism faltered for the first time all season.
Her voice wavered as she acknowledged her team’s bleak postseason prospects in a phone interview Wednesday. And in the hours after the defeat, the significance of the latest setback was not lost on the Terps’ squad.
“It doesn’t really boost our confidence at all,” shortstop Kathy McLaughlin said. “It sucks going into the weekend.”
The Terps will have to bounce back from the disheartening loss quickly, as they head to Chapel Hill, N.C., this weekend for an ACC series against a strong North Carolina (34-13, 8-7) team.
While the Tigers’ season sweep-clinching win Wednesday might have ended the Terps’ chances at an at-large bid for the NCAA Tournament, the Terps know it was just the latest disappointment in a season that has seen several.
“We’re much better than how we’re allowing ourselves to play and how we’re allowing ourselves to do,” Watten said. “We’ve got to get better. I’ve said it more than a few times. We’re a mentally young team. We let it slip out of our hands. We have to be tougher.”
The Terps are convinced they are closer to the team that upset top-ranked teams such as then-No. 19 Florida State and then-No. 18 Oklahoma State earlier this season than the one that has struggled at times this year against middling opponents such as the Tigers.
After their series victory over the Hokies, the Terps entered the road date confident they wouldn’t miss their second shot at Towson after falling March 6. That wasn’t the case.
“It felt amazing coming off that series, beating Virginia Tech by so much,” catcher Samantha Mallory said. “We felt like we were doing the same thing to [Towson], almost like it should have happened, and it didn’t.”
The Terps will now likely need to win the ACC Tournament to make the NCAA Tournament, increasing the stakes for what are already very important conference games. The Terps know they cannot let the pressure get to them in what are now do-or-die contests for the team’s postseason aspirations.
“Our goals are definitely the postseason, but we just gotta not look at the end,” Watten said. “We’ve gotta take one game at a time.”
The Terps knows that putting the crushing Towson loss behind them will be essential to playing well this weekend. If they are unable to forget their shortcomings against the Tigers, their next few games won’t turn out much better than Wednesday’s did.
“We’re not feeling too great, but we can’t sit and dwell on it too long,” Watten said. “We’ve got games this weekend, big games this weekend, so we definitely can’t sit around and dwell on it. We’ve just got to move on.”
schneider@umdbk.com
