Softball: Commanding Efforts Deliver Sun Belt Honors to Softball’s Kandra Lamb

First SBC Pitcher of the Week award in the 2021 season for Louisiana’s rising star

LAFAYETTE – Kandra Lamb played a key role in Louisiana holding South Alabama scoreless for the duration of a key Sun Belt Conference series sweep and turned in a commanding performance as a new series with Georgia Southern began immediately after, earning her Sun Belt Conference Pitcher of the Week honors.
 
The award, announced on Tuesday by the conference office, is the first SBC weekly honor of the season for Lamb and the 16th-ranked Ragin’ Cajuns.
 
It’s the second award overall for Lamb with Louisiana, adding to the honor claimed on Feb. 12, 2019 after beginning her collegiate career with back-to-back no-hitters.
 
Lamb struck out a career-high 12 batters and stranded a South Alabama runner at third base with less than two outs three times in the series clincher on Saturday. She re-entered the game in the seventh inning and recorded the biggest out of the day – a pop up with a runner at third to keep the game scoreless and set up Ciara Bryan’s heroics.
 
On Sunday, she wrapped up the series shutout of USA with 2-1/3 innings of one-hit softball, promptly retiring the visitors in order after being handed the lead entering the sixth inning.
 
Her weekend dominance continued in the Georgia Southern series opener later Sunday afternoon, retiring the side in five of the six innings pitched.
 
Lamb’s final numbers for the weekend included 25 strikeouts over 14-2/3 innings pitched, just seven hits allowed and a .137 opposing batting average. She combined with Summer Ellyson to hold South Alabama scoreless for 21 innings, becoming the first opposing staff to shut out USA in an entire SBC series since April 2017.
 
Louisiana, which has received at least one SBC Player or Pitcher of the Week award since the inception of the league in 2000, now owns 90 pitcher of the week awards in program history.
 
No. 16 Louisiana (22-6, 8-1 Sun Belt) travels to the Atlanta area for an Easter Weekend series with Georgia State (12-15, 0-7 Sun Belt) at the Bob Heck Softball Complex in nearby Decatur, Ga., set for Friday-Saturday, April 2-3.