Florida Gulf Coast University will play its last nonconference softball game of the season against the University of South Florida on Wednesday, April 22. The Eagles, with a record of 16-28 overall and 10-8 in conference play, will face the Bulls, who are currently 33-15 overall and hold a 15-6 mark in the American Athletic Conference.
This matchup comes after FGCU lost its recent series against Jacksonville. Julia Bacoulis stood out for the Eagles by delivering a strong performance with a career-high nine strikeouts during Saturday night’s win. Bacoulis leads her team with 75 strikeouts this season, ranking sixth in the ASUN Conference. She has maintained an earned run average (ERA) of 4.62 over 94 innings pitched and has posted a lower ERA of 3.28 in conference games.
Grace Taylor holds FGCU’s best ERA at 4.40 overall and has improved to a team-best mark of 2.98 within ASUN competition. On offense, Parris Wiggs is batting .327 with an on-base percentage (OBP) of .400, while Olivia Black is hitting .323 and has stolen fourteen bases—just one shy of setting FGCU’s Division I career record for stolen bases. Sietske Drijvers contributes both offensively and defensively; she is batting .293 and has caught thirteen runners stealing this year, which ranks ninth nationally and first in the ASUN.
USF enters the contest following recent road losses at Tulsa and East Carolina University as well as a midweek defeat at Florida but secured home wins over UTSA and swept Florida Atlantic University in Tampa. The Bulls’ offense features Toryn Fulton (.328 average), Alex Wilkes (team-high .589 slugging percentage), while Anne Long leads their pitching staff with a stellar ERA of 1.55 across more than one hundred twenty-one innings pitched.
South Florida boasts strong statistics as a team: their collective ERA stands at 2.74—the best among American Athletic Conference teams—and they rank eighteenth nationally in that category. Their defense also ranks high nationally with twenty-nine double plays turned (third most nationwide) and an eighth-ranked fielding percentage (.980). Offensively, USF leads all teams nationwide with fifty-three sacrifice bunts so far this season.
The previous meeting between these two teams resulted in a victory for USF by a score of nine to one on March 18 in Fort Myers; Sophie Wylie hit a home run for FGCU during that game.
