April 16, 2006
EVANSTON, Ill. -- Junior Eileen Canney (Paradise, Calif./Paradise) earned her third-consecutive shutout and fanned a Big Ten-season high 15 batters to lead No. 17 Northwestern to a 4-0 win over Purdue in the first game of a doubleheader Sunday afternoon at Sharon J. Drysdale Field.
The Wildcats have not allowed the Boilermakers to score a run in the last 31 innings played between the teams, dating back to a 13-3, six-inning victory for Northwestern on April 25, 2004.
With the win, Northwestern improves to 29-10 overall on the year, 9-2 in the Big Ten. Purdue falls to 26-24 on the season, 4-7 in the conference.
In the first inning, junior Garland Cooper (Mission Viejo, Calif./Santa Margarita Catholic) continued to tee off on Big Ten pitching, crushing a solo home run off the side of McGaw Hall to put Northwestern on top early, 1-0.
In the fourth, with the Wildcats still in the lead by one and storm clouds looming, Kristen Amegin (West Sacramento, Calif./Elk Grove) unleashed the thunder. The senior led off the frame with a bomb to left-centerfield off McGaw Hall to push Northwestern's advantage to two, 2-0.
The homer was the team-leading ninth of the year for Amegin, and gave her 34 for her career to place her in a sixth-place tie with Penn State's Shannon Salsburg (1995-98) on the Big Ten's career list.
In the fifth, the Wildcats added one more run to their total. With two outs, freshman Tammy Williams (El Dorado Springs, Mo./Osceola) worked a full-count walk to reach first base.
Cooper then stepped up to the plate looking to exact revenge from her last at-bat. After Cooper hit the homer, Purdue starter Diana LaRiva threw two balls behind her in Cooper's next at bat before finally hitting her with a pitch. In her third plate appearance, Cooper dumped a double into left field to score Williams and make the score 3-0.
Purdue mounted its first serious scoring threat of the game in the top of the sixth, loading the bases with one out. Canney struck out the next batter before coaxing a groundout to herself to preserve the shutout.
The Wildcats continued to push their advantage in the bottom of the inning. Amegin drew a leadoff walk, then was replaced by pinch runner Ann Schraufnagel (Oak Park, Ill./Oak Park River Forest). Senior Sheila McCorkle (Costa Mesa, Calif./Mater Dei) followed with a clever single to third, but a line-drive double play eliminated McCorkle at first.
Senior Ashley Crane (Sammamish, Wash./Eastlake) came up with two outs and grounded a single back up the middle to score Schraufnagel and make the score 4-0 in favor of NU.
Canney finished the game by striking out the side in the seventh, recording her 15th and final whiff just as the lightning detector erupted to delay the start of game two. Canney allowed three hits and one walk to record her third-consecutive shutout and her 11th of the year. She is in a four-way tie for the fifth-best single-season shutout total in NU history.
Her strikeout total was second only to her 17-strikeout performance earlier in the year against Hawaii. She now has 217 whiffs this season, her best-career total. She is the fifth pitcher in Northwestern history to fan 200 in a season.
Cooper finished the game 2-for-2 with a run scored and two RBIs. McCorkle also collected a pair of hits for the 'Cats.