The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
Torrington’s DuBois to lead BU against Oklahoma
Torrington’s DuBois to take mound for BU against Oklahoma in NCAA Tournament
A myriad of thoughts were going through Ali DuBois’ mind when was putting pen to paper and signing her National Letter of Intent to pitch at Boston University. However, not even in her wildest dreams did the former Torrington High School star believe she could be stepping inside the pitching circle to face defending national champion Oklahoma in the NCAA tournament as she will on Friday night.
“I just want to keep pitching,” DuBois said. “I don’t want to make anything bigger than it is because everybody is playing the game. I don’t want to get too nervous and make them seem bigger, I just want to keep pitching and playing my game. Our team is great and I want to keep trusting them and keep playing the game like we can.”
Although the Terriers returned two pitchers including Kali Magane, a winner of a team-best 13 games during the 2017 season, DuBois got the call to start the season opener and appeared in each of the Terriers’ first six games of the season. Heading into the NCAA tournament, the only freshmen with more strikeouts than the 191 recorded by DuBois are Michigan’s Meghan Beaubien and Mary Haff of Arkansas, and only nine freshmen have a lower earned run average than DuBois’ mark of 1.77. DuBois led the Patriot League in wins, earned run average, strikeouts, innings pitched and games started in a dominating debut season, resulting in her winning the Patriot League’s Pitcher of the Year and Rookie of the Year honors.
“At the beginning of the season everybody was pitching and everybody was figuring it out,” DuBois said. “I thought we were all going to keep pitching together. I really wasn’t expecting to pitch as much as I did. I wasn’t expecting to be on that stage at regionals. Obviously, I wanted to win. I wanted the ball, but I wasn’t expecting to be where we are right now.”
DuBois credits her performance at the Nor’Easter Invitational in late March in West Hartford and New Britain from March 23-25 when she went 5-0 with a 1.99 ERA with 29 strikeouts and six walks as BU posted a 6-0 mark for being the time when she really started to hit her stride.
“That was where we kind of figured it out,” DuBois said. “I was throwing pretty well and I wanted to keep throwing.”
She has certainly done that as she didn’t allow a run in seven of her last 10 appearances, including a pair of five-inning one-hit shutouts in three games at the Patriot League Tournament.
“It is just so easy when you have such a good team behind you. They take away all kinds of hits and score so many runs that the pressure is off of you,” DuBois said. “It is just so easy knowing that every single person has your back; it just makes everything so much more fun.”
Now comes the challenge of retaining that confident mindset facing Oklahoma, the second-highest scoring team in Division I in the regional being hosted by
the 50-3 Sooners.
“It is something new and everybody keeps telling me that there are a lot of emotions, all the fans are saying things to you,” DuBois said. “Just being on that stage and on ESPN, it is such a big stage. But I hope to just keep playing our game and not let all of that get to us because I don’t think I play as well when I start thinking about all sorts of different things. Hopefully, I can just focus on pitching and playing the game, because anything can happen so long as I play the game and forget about all the other things, I think we’ll be OK.”
One of Oklahoma’s three losses came to the Terriers back in February, although DuBois wasn’t one of the three pitchers to work in the stunning upset against a team ranked first nationally at the time. She did get to pitch against six NCAA tournament teams.
Boston University coach Ashley Waters, a former infielder and member of two national championship teams with the Stratfordbased Brakettes, challenged the Terriers and her talented freshman pitcher with an ambitious nonconference schedule.
“At the beginning of the season we played really great teams,” DuBois said. “I had ups and downs. I threw some really great games and some really awful games, and all you can do is learn from it so it
DuBois led the Patriot League in wins, earned run average, strikeouts, innings pitched and games started in a dominating debut season resulting in her winning the Patriot League’s Pitcher of the Year and Rookie of the Year honors.
really helped a lot.
“Being here, they have definitely improved my drop a lot. My changeup has improved a lot since high school. Actually, all of my pitches have improved a lot.”