Mizzou softball enters critical home stretch of regular-season
COLUMBIA, Mo. (KMIZ)
The final 12 games remaining on the Mizzou softball team's regular-season slate will prove critical in if the team makes its highly-anticipated return to the NCAA Tournament stage in 2026.
Head coach Larissa Anderson and her squad sit at 22-22 overall with a 6-9 record in Southeastern Conference play, after taking a series loss at No. 14 Georgia over the weekend. If the Tigers want to make a return to the postseason, they'll need stay around that .500 mark moving forward, as teams must have at least a .500 winning percentage to be eligibility for one of the 32 at-large spots.
While its exciting to have everything you want right in front of you, it also can create pressure.
"I mean, there's the excitement, but there's also knowing that the sand [in the] bottle is dribbling away, you know, you're coming to the end. You feel that pressure, you know what's at stake and you know what you need to do and be at the end of the year," head coach Larissa Anderson said during Monday's press conference. "We don't focus on that, like, we got to focus on one thing at a time. We gotta focus on what we need to do in practice tomorrow. We got to focus on Kansas on Wednesday and, you know, it's going to be a big weekend at home with South Carolina coming in and alumni day, so we got to make sure that we win the little moments and we got to put ourselves in a position to be competitive and be successful."
You can watch the full press conference with Coach Anderson in the video player below.
The Tigers have a big week ahead with a rivalry clash against Kansas on the books for Wednesday and then a three-game set against South Carolina at home, over the weekend. Mizzou will roll into those games fresh off of a series loss against No. 14 Georgia in Athens. Although Coach Anderson's squad was able to steal a 4-3 win from the Bulldogs on Saturday, the bats went cold on each time they had to face Georgia star Randi Roelling.
The left-handed pitcher spun a couple of gems against Mizzou on Friday and Saturday, shutting out the Tigers in both games. She ended the weekend with two complete-game shutouts, allowing just a total of five hits, while fanning 13 MU batters.
"She was a very, very strong pitcher..The strike zone was a little bit wider than what we experienced on Saturday and I felt like we didn't adjust to the strike zone. You know, she throws up and down and she has seven inches of vertical break going up and she had seven inches down. Like, that's a huge zone to be able to cover," Anderson said. "I thought that we were disciplined not chasing the ball up in the zone, but then we got beat at the bottom of the zone. So, we have to be able to adapt to whatever strike zone that is being called in that moment. I thought we had way too many strikeouts looking and so it's immediately going back and seeing where those pitches were...I'd like to see [them be] a little bit more competitive in the batter's box and spoil the [pitches] that they can't really handle, rather than taking them to get them called."
Mindset is half the battle when it comes to hitting and, this season, the Tigers are compounding that challenge with also having the youngest team in the SEC. With three true freshmen in the batting order, Anderson and first-year hitting coach Jake Epstein are still working to find consistency in each hitter's plate approach.
That consistency will come down to time and experience, but also having the fortitude to stick to the plan put into place.
"Up and down. Like, that's been our season," Anderson said when asked about how her team has handled the changes from game-to-game, from a hitting perspective. "There's times that they they buy into the approach, they stay disciplined, they don't they don't waver from it and those are the outings that we saw on Saturday. Those are the outings that we we just stay true to the plan that's in place and we don't panic. That's the thing that happens with young hitters, like you might have a plan of cutting the plate in half and then all of a sudden the pitcher counters and goes against what we were looking for. Then, all of a sudden they panic and deviate from what that plan is. Saturday, they stayed true to that plan. Sunday, we wanted them to make a couple adjustments in the batter's box and then we didn't stay disciplined to that plan. So again, it's just getting them to to believe that they can accomplish anything that they need to, stay disciplined to it and then just believing that they're going to be successful in it."
It's tough to find that consistency when you're facing All-American caliber pitchers, weekend-in and week-out, in the SEC. However, Anderson said she is happy to have seen growth over the course of the season and believes her offense is trending in the right direction.
In order to get better, the hitters need to appreciate the process and find ways to see the small wins in getting hit by a pitch or drawing a walk.
"Winning those little battles then can carry over to maybe a more successful at-bat. But, when they get discouraged because they feel like they're letting everybody down, they're letting their team down, they're letting themselves down, they're letting the crowd down because they didn't actually drive in a run, then the that's where the mental aspect comes into play a little bit more. So, it's just continuing to encourage them that they're doing the right things and eventually the ball's going to fall," Anderson said.
As of Monday afternoon, the Tigers rank second-to-last in batting average in the SEC, hitting .275 as a team in 2026. Mizzou also has the lowest number of runs brought in in conference action (191).
As Mizzou now enters the back half of the regular-season, Coach Anderson was also asked to evaluate how her pitchers have performed up until this point. She said, overall, it's been a good year for the pitching staff.
In SEC action, veteran throwers Cierra Harrison and Marissa McCann have each been getting the starts, with relievers Abby Carr, Courtney Donahue and Rylee Michalak coming in, as needed.
Carr, a true freshman, leads the team with a 2.31 ERA in her first collegiate season, allowing a team-low of 20 runs, while striking out 53 batters. Meanwhile, Harrison and McCann have an average ERA of 3.74 in their starts in 2026. Overall, Anderson said that her pitchers have a strong understanding of what their response ability is and what their ability is to make adjustments.
"The one adjustment I'd like to see our pitching staff make is recognizing when the opponent is very aggressive, let's try to get them to swing on ball one, ball two. A pitcher's mentality is always get strike one, get strike one, get ahead, but if the hitter is being so aggressive and that ball's a little bit too much on the plate, that's when it starts to get hard. So, it's understanding the game within the game a little bit more and that's just continuing to study the game and understand what you're asked to do," Anderson said.
Before Mizzou turns its attention to another SEC series, the team is locked in on rivalry action. The Tigers will take on Kansas on Wednesday at 5 p.m. at Arrocha Ballpark in Lawrence. Coach Anderson said that getting past the Jayhawks will be no easy feat.
"Kansas is having a great year. They really strong offensively, they have some veterans, they have a lot of upperclassmen, they have a lot of senior leadership within their lineup. One of the most impressive players, she's in the two spot right now, she has a home record. She has 15 home runs. I haven't seen what she did [on Sunday], but, really strong offensively. So, that's going to be key for our pitchers to make some really, really good pitches. We know it's a rivalry. Like, we know what's at stake here and there's a lot of deep history going through. So, we know that they're going to be coming for after us. It's going to be a quick turnaround for us to get back on a bus on Wednesday and head on over there, but we got to compete. We got to be able to make some great pitches and take advantage of the opportunities we have offensively," Anderson said.
