At the early season southern tournaments, we played teams from conferences that were not nearly as good as the Horizon League. That led to the high but unrealistic expectations. As OleYSUfan so correctly notes, pitching is everything in softball. Our pitchers are better than average but lack the ability to shut down the top lineups in the Horizon League. Our batters, who are quite good, are no match for the excellent pitchers that Valpo, Loyola, and Butler have. (Butler's ace pitcher was hurt when they played us; we get her in the first round of the tournament, unfortunately.)
Campbell has done a good job lifting this program from really bad to above average. But we can't take the next step up to legitimate contention until we get that dominating pitcher.
