GULFPORT, Miss. – The Alcorn State University softball program will be the East's #4 seed in this week's SWAC Tournament and will start its quest for a title against the West's #1 seed Texas Southern Tuesday at 3 p.m. in Gulfport.
The Lady Braves (10-16, 8-7 SWAC) had a chance to earn the second seed if it would have taken two-of-three or better at Mississippi Valley State last week but the series was canceled. Alcorn will look to end an 11-year championship drought, with its last one coming at the end of the 2010 campaign.
The Purple and Gold saw two of its own selected to the All-SWAC Teams as earlier this morning as
Amari Ramsey defended her preseason title as Player of the Year while
Ambria Dorsey landed on the Second Team.
Ramsey, who will be returning to her hometown of Gulfport, Mississippi for the conference tournament, has been bestowed her second career All-SWAC First Team honor and her first SWAC Player of the Year award.
The primarily third baseman leads the Lady Braves in batting average (.325), hits (26), runs scored (15), doubles (14) and total bases (42). Her current doubles total is the third-highest for a single season in program history, is ranked 19th in the NCAA and she's averaging the sixth-most doubles per game in the country at 0.54.
The Biology major who graduated on Saturday finished the regular season at tenth in the SWAC for slugging percentage (.539), won a SWAC Hitter of the Week award on March 13 and became the 15th Lady Brave to become a member of the 100-hit club during the annual River City Classic earlier this season.
Heading into the week, Ramsey is eighth on softball all-time hits list with 122, three behind
Adriana Gutierrez for seventh (125), five back of Becky Mason for sixth (128) and trails Melissa Mason by eight for fifth (130).
Dorsey, originally from Phoenix, Arizona, is receiving her first All-SWAC recognition of her Lady Braves tenure in the pitcher's final campaign as she came back for one more ride as a graduate student for the 2021 campaign.
The chemistry major has seven of the team's ten wins on the season, going 7-4 over 14 appearances and nine starts while winning SWAC Pitcher of the Week on April 30.
She had a presence on the SWAC statistical leaderboards all year long, ranking third for strikeouts looking (19), fourth in wins (7), seventh in total strikeouts (38), eighth for batting average against (.284) and ninth for innings pitched (60.0).
During conference play, Dorsey was the rock atop the rotation as she topped the Purple and Gold with a 4.50 ERA, 42.0 innings pitched, 28 strikeouts, eight appearances, six starts, five wins and a batting average against of .267.
Whenever the 2021 season ends, Dorsey's name will be cemented in the record books as one of the best pitchers in school history. Over the course of the 26-game slate, she moved into third on the program's all-time strikeouts list (213), fifth in games started (57) and innings pitched (355.2) plus sixth for career wins (18).
Depending on how well the Lady Braves' run in the tournament goes, she has a chance to catch Cami Banks for fifth on the wins list (19) with one more victory.
Scouting the Texas Southern Lady Tigers (16-18, 13-5 SWAC)
TSU has had a softball dynasty as long as Alcorn's championship drought, claiming its 11th-straight SWAC Western Division crown and coming into the field hot with wins in eight of its last ten.
The ladies from Houston are ranked among the top-15 nationwide in triples per game at 0.38 while fronting the league with a 0.289 batting average, an ERA of 3.67, a 2.04 strikeout-to-walk ratio, an on-base percentage of 0.371 plus six shutouts from its pitching staff.
The Maroon and Silver are led by first-year head coach and SWAC Co-Coach of the Year Raven Rodriguez, who helped the Lady Tigers secure impressive non-conference victories over Abilene Christian, UTSA and Texas A&M-Corpus Christi.
SWAC Pitcher of the Year Naomi Reyes has been a terror for the SWAC offenses all season long, leading the conference with a 1.52 ERA in league play with 11 complete games, three shutouts and a perfect game against the Lady Braves.
Reyes ranked fourth in the Southwestern Athletic Conference in strikeouts at 78 and won multiple SWAC Pitcher of the Week accolades.
Texas Southern had three players land on the All-SWAC Second Team including Daryn Haslam, Paige Jackson and Tevanae Tate.
Haslam finished second in the conference for walks per game (0.54), Jackson hit .300 with 11 RBIs, six runs scored and four doubles while Tate was top-30 nationally for both triples per game (0.13) and total triples (4) to go along with a SWAC-best 0.695 slugging percentage.
Alcorn has dropped its last four ballgames versus Texas Southern, going 9-21 in program history against the Lady Tigers.
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