The freshman softball pitcher, Sam Landry tossed ten scoreless innings against UT Arlington over the weekend striking out eighteen batters steering the Ragin’ Cajuns to their first Sun Belt Conference series sweep of the season. This led Landry to her Sun Belt Pitcher of the Week honors in the conference office Tuesday.
Landry limited the Mavericks to only five base hits and struck out at least eight batters in each start with only one runner to pass second base in her entirety in the circle.
Control was established very quickly for Landry in her start on Friday as she retired seven of the Mavericks batters she faced with five in a strikeout. She solidified her shutout performance with three induced straight outs after two players reached base in the top of the fifth.
Sunday’s finale added half of Landry’s scoreless innings with ten of her fifteen outs coming by strikeout that would lead her to the highest strikeout output in SBC play to date with ten. Landry retired UTA’s leadoff batter in all but one of the five innings when the batter reached a single in the second inning, she responded with three consecutive strikeouts after.
This is Landry’s first SBC Pitcher of the Week as a Ragin’ Cajun as she adds to Louisiana’s collection this season with Meghan Schorman in her relief efforts in their matchup against LSU on March 8th.
Since the inception in 2000 of the SBC Player or Pitcher of the Week for the league, Louisiana has received at least one of the two and now owns 93 Pitcher of the Week awards in program history.
With Taylor Roman’s SBC Player of the Week on opening weekend, Louisiana has had three individual players pick up a weekly award this Spring.
Landry and the Ragin’ Cajuns (20-8, 7-2 SBC) will hope to carry the momentum of their sweep of UTA to their trip to Texas this week. Louisiana is scheduled to rematch the No. 16 Texas on Wednesday, March 30th in Austin followed by their Sun Belt series with Texas State in San Marcos this weekend April 1-3.
Wednesday’s contest with Texas is set to air on the Longhorn Network while all three games of the Texas State series are being carried on ESPN+.