By Mike Rudin – Sports Editor
Hofstra softball played on their home turf for the second straight day to face the Stony Brook Seawolves but the Pride failed to score at all in a 4-0 shutout loss.
The loss breaks the Pride’s five-game winning streak and marks the third loss at home in the 2015 season as Hofstra drops to 23-10-1.
“We didn’t come to play today. We were defensive on the field, I’ve never seen a Hofstra team make four errors [and] I’m very disappointed in that,” said head coach Larissa Anderson. “We didn’t attack defensively. Stony Brook played much better than Hofstra today…they pitched a great game…we didn’t make any adjustments from the start of the game to the end of the game.”
Hofstra starter, Taylor Pirone received the loss despite pitching a complete game while striking out eight batters.
“She wasn’t consistent with her effort on every, single pitch. If the pitcher doesn’t push as hard as they possibly can on every pitch, they’re going to leave the ball over the heart of the plate,” said Anderson. “The change-up that Taylor threw [leading to the home run] hung a little bit, was about belt-high…which is not very common for Taylor.”
Seawolves’ starting pitcher, Jane Shallen, threw seven scoreless innings for the shutout win, including six strikeouts on the day.
Four fielding errors combined with the Hofstra offense swinging 0-for-9 at the plate with runners on base and 0-for-5 with runners killed any chances for the Pride.
Both pitchers mirrored each other early one, Talyor Pirone and Jane Shallen shut down the other team’s hitters in the first two innings.
In the top of the third, Lexie Shue hit a two-run homer that put Pirone in a bind for the rest of the game.
The following inning with Taylor Pirone on the mound, back-to-back errors costed another run and increased the team’s deficit to 3-0.
Pirone pulled together to end the inning and put up back-to-back scoreless inning to keep Hofstra within reach of a possible comeback.
Hofstra’s offense was not able to meet Pirone halfway with not being able to convert any runs on the board with Jane Shallen on the mound.
“Her motion was little unorthodox, not very traditional, and we did not get ourselves on time, she was beating us with her motion,” said Anderson.
Turning to the top of the seventh, Pirone continued her work on the mound but Stony Brook got the better of her one more time with an RBI groundout by Alexandra Pisciotta that pushed the deficit to 4-0.
The bottom of the seventh inning was Hofstra’s last chance to comeback and Shallen shut the Pride down with a 1-2-3 inning to end the game.
Hofstra heads back onto the road to take on their conference opponent, the (25-13, 7-5 CAA) Elon Phoenix. The two teams begin the series with a doubleheader on Saturday, game one scheduled to start at 2:00 p.m. and game two at 4:00 p.m.