Linda Kalafatis Good Quotations

Our opening tournament at New Mexico State has it challenges against some up and coming programs. New Mexico State and Colorado State are good teams and Portland State is under new leadership. UT-San Antonio led the nation in home runs last year. Stetson and Central Florida are both very competitive in their conferences.

If anything, we've maybe not gotten the recognition that we deserve. And then when you put the challenges of practicing indoors for this amount of time and not being able to have the team outside (unlike some of the West Coast and southern schools) I'm not sure how many of those guys can do what we do and be as good as we are.

Our biggest question is how do we replace the consistency at shortstop that we had the last four years with Jennifer Johnson . We also need to establish our pitching depth and the catcher position. Like last year, I feel very good about our offense, which is why our defense will be so important.

Ritter is a first-team All-American and in the Olympic program and it showed. We had a game plan against her but we didn't stick to it too well when she came back in. I give our girls credit for battling and coming out with a lot of intensity. That's just a very good Michigan team.

Alabama is a great program in the SEC and Louisville won a very good Conference-USA last year. Louisville beat us on our field in the fall so we'll be excited to play them again when we're at full strength.

Megan probably gets to the ball quicker than anyone in our outfield. Offensively she has good instincts and loves to hit with runners on base. Liz became our starting centerfielder by the end of the year last year and became an even better hitter through the fall. She has as good an arm as anyone in the Big Ten in centerfield.

The competitive equity around the country has really grown. I think it's still pretty common knowledge that the hotbed is still out on the West Coast, but there are really good softball players coming from all over the country now.