Pitt softball dominates in series sweep of Virginia

Pitt baseball keeps winning series and so does Pitt softball.

The Pitt softball team dominated their most recent opponent, Virginia, to take yet another series from an ACC foe. The Panthers swept a three-game series with the Cavaliers over the weekend continuing their hot streak.

Pitching was key for the Panthers, who allowed only five total runs in the three games. Pitt (26-16-1) easily took Game 1, winning 9-2. The Panthers needed a walkoff hit in Game 2 to win 3-2 on Saturday but then crushed the Cavaliers (12-35) on Sunday in a 12-1 win before the mercy rule ended the game after 4 ¹⁄₂ innings.

Virginia’s not a good team this season so winning the series was definitely needed. Sweeping it, of course, was the best case scenario, so it was good to see them take care of business and take all three games. Junior Sarah Dawson was the pitcher in Game 1 while senior Kayla Harris took Game 3. The two shared the circle in Game 2 with Harris starting and Dawson finishing.

Pitt has now won five games in a row and moved back into first place in the ACC Coastal with a 14-6 conference record (1/2 game over North Carolina at 14-7).

In the team’s games this year, the announcers have stressed that Pitt has a variety of players contributing on offense and that’s certainly true. Giorgiana Zeremenko is easily the team’s biggest offensive threat with 14 home runs this year but the Panthers are getting contributions from everywhere. Three players are batting over .300, five have more than 30 hits and three players, Olivia Gray, Alexis Solak, and Gabrielle Fredericks, are all fairly close Zeremenko in terms of RBI. When you couple that offense with the team’s quality defense and often dominant pitching (Harris and Dawson both have ERAs well under 3.00 with Harris at 2.17), you can see why this team is winning games.

Next weekend, Pitt has a doubleheader against Marshall, which you can see on the ACC Network/WatchESPN.

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