Huskies can win on the road? If they are the team with Danielle Lawrie
The men's basketball team preserves its 0-for-the-road record. But softball pitcher Danielle Lawrie shows perfection comes as easily for her in Arizona as in the friendly confines of Montlake.
By Mike Henderson
February 12, 2010.
The Huskies can too win on the road. Nah, not those Huskies, the ones led by potential league MVP Quincy Pondexter. Those 0-for-the-road Dawgs lost yet again away from home Thursday, succumbing 93-81 to Cal, the apparent class of the men’s basketball competition in the weak Pac-10. Q-Pon had 18 points, second to Isaiah Thomas’s 24.
Every starter for the balanced Golden Bears scored in double figures.
The Huskies will try to salvage half the latest road trip Saturday against Stanford, which beat the Cougs Thursday 60-58.
Meanwhile, a few hundred miles away in Arizona, perhaps the best Husky athlete of the past decade picked up a softball for the first time this season and put it down 21 batters later.
Danielle Lawrie, last season's national collegiate player of the year for the NCAA champs, seemed utterly unfazed by facing Auburn somewhere other than at her familiar Montlake ballpark. She breezed through a perfect game, whiffing 16 of the 21 set down in order.
Oh, yeah, and the sensational senior also supplied a home run to the 5-0 cause.
Getting back to those pitching numbers: Striking out 16 while throwing to 21 batters projects to a big-league pitcher K-ing 21 of 27, a feat never accomplished in the majors. Even if it had been the odds would be prohibitively long that it also would’ve been during a perfect game.
Also not widely known: As a fledgling softball star in British Columbia, Lawrie also lettered in high-school basketball, helping her team win the occasional away game, unlike some hoop squads that come to mind.