University of Louisiana at Lafayette Athletics
Brooke Mitchell Earns Repeat Honors as Sun Belt Pitcher of the Week
2/28/2005 12:00:00 AM | Softball
LAFAYETTE
– If ever there was a time when a person truly deserving of
an award received one, that moment happened on Monday.
Brooke Mitchell, the senior ace strikeout artist for the sixth-ranked Louisiana's Ragin' Cajuns softball team and lone active career 100-game winner in all of NCAA Division I, put her team on her shoulders this past weekend at the NFCA Leadoff Classic pitching four complete games, tossing three shutouts and 38 strikeouts in leading the Cajuns to a 3-1 finish in the prestigious tournament.
For her tireless efforts she was honored as this week's Sun Belt Conference Pitcher of the Week – the second straight week that the 2004 first team All-American from Pasadena, Texas, won the award.
Mitchell posted three double-digit strikeout performances and totaled 38 strikeouts over 27 innings at the prestigious NFCA Leadoff Classic against the likes of DePaul, San Diego State, North Carolina and Georgia.
Mitchell tossed the fifth no-hitter in Leadoff Classic history when she no-hit DePaul on a 12-strikeout performance in the Cajuns Leadoff Classic opener on Friday. She then followed up the DePaul outing with a four-hit shutout and 10 strikeouts against SDSU.
She held opponents to just 14 hits over 27 innings and ended the weekend with a 0.52 ERA and three complete-game shutouts. Of the 14 hits allowed, at least 10 were infield singles.
With
the three shutouts, she extended her streak of consecutive
innings without an earned run allowed to 43 1/3 innings
before UGA scored in the bottom of the first inning in
Saturday's finale.
Her weekend strikeout total moved her to 1,091 for her career and allowed her to move into the Top 20 on the all-time NCAA Division I career strikeouts list.
Mitchell also used this past weekend's performances to push her career wins total to 103 moving her two wins shy of passing up Kyla Hall (104 career wins) for the all-time career victories lead at Louisiana-Lafayette.
Mitchell collected the Sun Belt Pitcher of the Week honor for the 13th time in her career and became the first player this season to earn back-to-back honors. It marks the fourth time in the last two years that she has won the award in back-to-back weeks.
The Ragin' Cajuns have now won 38 Sun Belt weekly honors in four-plus seasons under former Ragin' Cajuns All-American and current head coach Stefni Lotief.
Mitchell and her teammates will be back in action on Wednesday as the sixth-ranked Ragin' Cajuns travel to Natchitoches, La., for a 5 p.m., doubleheader against Northwestern State (10-10).
2005 LOUISIANA-LAFAYETTE SOFTBALL WEEKLY HONORS
Player of the Week
Feb. 21 - Jill Robertson
Pitcher of the Week
Feb. 21 - Brooke Mitchell
Feb. 28 - Brooke Mitchell
-- Ragin' Cajuns --
