A smile spread across Corinne Ozanne’s face as she rounded third base for home plate, jogging lightly to her waiting teammates. The ball was long gone, hit well past the center-field fence with bases loaded.

Moments later, on defense, Syracuse looked on dejectedly as DePaul regained three runs, leveling the score and rendering Ozanne’s grand slam in the previous inning void. The onslaught of hits kept pouring and Syracuse stayed down.

“1 … 2 … 3 … Go get my ball!” DePaul players chanted, lining up at home plate to congratulate its players following every Blue Demon home run in Saturday’s doubleheader.

The runs kept mounting against the Orange, who fell 15-6 then 11-0 to the Blue Demons on Saturday. The hits were telling — 18 and 10 for DePaul in the two games, compared to five and two for the Orange. Compounded with struggles at the mound for Syracuse, Saturday’s outing added to a less-than-picturesque season for the Orange that, after a 16-2 loss to DePaul on Sunday, sits 1-5 in conference play and 13-20 overall.

“Deflating,” head coach Leigh Ross said, describing Syracuse’s slide following Ozanne’s second-inning grand slam in the first game of Saturday’s doubleheader. “Deflated is the word that comes to my mind. But then you need to bring the team in, you need to regroup and say ‘OK, you got to let that go.’”

DePaul’s hot streak at the plate was more than Syracuse could overcome, with each of Saturday’s games being called one inning early.

“They just got really good hits. Good, timely hits,” junior captain Jasmine Watson said. “It just wasn’t there for us today.”

Syracuse played three different pitchers in the first of Saturday’s two-game set — with Stacy Kuwik starting and Danielle Chitkowski and Lindsey Larkin stepping in for relief. DePaul’s offense had an answer for each pitching change, scoring at least three runs in each of the last four innings on Sunday.

Though Kuwik threw the change-up successfully in Saturday’s outings, pitching coach Jenna Caira said Syracuse wasn’t hitting its spots across the board.

“We can’t be content with just throwing it and hoping it hits the corner,” Caira said. “We have to demand the corners. If we don’t, it’s going to hit the right part of the plate, and these players are way too good.”

Sophomore Lindsay Taylor, who has been credited with growth as a pitcher this season, sat out all three of the weekend’s games with an undisclosed injury.

Kuwik allowed just one run in the first three innings of work in Saturday’s second matchup, but struggled to maintain that success. For Caira, it comes down to sustaining the mental toughness that has become a season-long question for the young Syracuse team, adding that the consistency she’s witnessed in warm-ups and practice doesn’t translate to games.

“She just has to keep that mental toughness there,” Caira said of Kuwik. “We have the physical part down; we just got to get the mental part down.”

Coming off last season, one of the winningest in program history, Caira and Ross agree this year’s team lacks a defined leadership.

“We’re young, and the team needs to find itself and define themselves,” Ross said. “It’s time for somebody to kind of make a spark and step up and be a leader.”

Published on April 8, 2013 at 1:21 am

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