COLLEGE STATION, Texas (KRHD) — The Texas A&M softball team dropped two spots in this week's ESPN.com poll down to No. 4, but they're still just a game and a half out of first place in the SEC standings headed into the final weekend of conference play. The Aggies will now head to Knoxville to take on the No. 2 Tennessee Lady Vols.
“Overall, I felt like, we needed Sunday to kind of get back into our groove, and [we’re] excited to finish SEC play and playing against a really good team,” Aggie head coach Trisha Ford said.
Regardless of what's at stake for the regular season, the Aggies will stick to their same approach that they have all year, and that's focusing their energy on the opponent that's directly in front of them.
“It's really like, ‘who are we playing against and how do we beat them.’ That's all I really care about,” Ford said. “And, I talk to the team about that though, a lot of like, at the end of the year is when you can look back and be like, ‘oh my gosh, we've done this or we did this,’ but really for me, it's, ‘Who are we playing? Tennessee. How do we beat Tennessee? And then whatever, next week looks like for the conference tournament, like, ‘who are we playing and how do we beat them?’”
On the doorstep of the postseason, the Aggies are looking to secure a top 8 national seed, and they'll be able to lean on their experiences throughout the season, having played one of the toughest schedules in the country.
“For us, it is another game, it's another series, it's another really hard SEC series,” Ford said. “But all of this is helping us, in our toolbox of what this looks like, how to go on the road, how to compete at a really, really high level, at the end of the year. I mean, there's just all these things that we can really take from it and help us as we enter into the next part.”
The No. 4 Aggies will start their final series of the regular season, Thursday night against the No. 2 Lady Vols.
First pitch at Sherry Parker Lee Stadium in Knoxville is set for 5 p.m. on SEC Network+.
