NEW YORK—Villanova had three players recognized by the BIG EAST on Monday afternoon when the league announced its weekly awards, including senior pitcher
Paige Rauch (Windsor, N.Y.) who earned her second straight Pitcher of the Week honor. She was joined by junior teammates
Ryan Henry (Ramsey, N.J.) and
Sara Kennedy (Newtown, Pa.) who were each chosen for the Honor Roll. The latest set of weekly awards comes as the Wildcats are riding an eight-game winning streak.
Rauch won all three of her starts on the mound last week and pitched a pair of shutouts in a three-game sweep of Butler over the weekend. She went 3-0 with a 0.67 ERA and 22 strikeouts over 21.0 innings pitched in her three appearances while holding opposing batters to a .164 average (12-for-73) and just two extra-base hits against her. Rauch is currently in the midst of one of the most successful runs by a Villanova pitcher in recent memory. In six outings over an 11-day span from March 11-21, she gave up just two runs over 36.2 innings while pitching four shutouts and working to a 0.38 ERA during that stretch.
This past weekend was the Wildcats first BIG EAST series of the season and Rauch helped the team to its first 3-0 start in conference play since 2004. She nearly single-handedly beat the Bulldogs in a 3-0 win in the series opener. Rauch hit a pair of solo home runs in her first two plate appearances of that game, then was intentionally walked with the bases empty in each of her next two times up. The first intentional walk later led to an RBI single by Henry as Villanova extended its lead. Rauch also carried a no-hitter into the sixth inning in that game and wound up allowing just two softly hit singles in the shutout.
In addition to her pitching stats, Rauch was also the Wildcats top hitter in five games last week. She batted .471 (8-for-17) with a .571 on-base percentage and a .941 slugging percentage over 21 plate appearances. Rauch tied the Villanova career home run record with 34 home runs in a Wildcats uniform with the second of her two blasts on Saturday and became the first known batter in program history to draw two intentional walks in the same game. Earlier in the week in a non-conference doubleheader sweep of Towson, Rauch tied career highs with four hits and four runs batted in.
Henry leads the BIG EAST with eight home runs on the season and was the top hitter in the conference in the league games that were played over the weekend. She went 5-for-9 (.556) in the Butler series and hit a solo home run to open the scoring in the second game of the series which Villanova eventually won by a 4-1 score. Henry added an RBI single in the series opener and is now batting .396 with her eight home runs and an .887 slugging percentage on the season.
The combination of Rauch and Kennedy on the mound was a dominant 1-2 punch for the Wildcats in their five wins last week. Kennedy won both of her starts, including pitching a six-hitter in a complete game effort against the Bulldogs in a 4-1 victory. She allowed a solo home run in the second inning of that game but no other extra-base hits the rest of the way. Kennedy walked two and struck out six versus Butler after pitching six strong innings in an 11-2 win at Towson earlier in the week. She gave up two runs (one earned) in that outing and finished the week 2-0 with a 1.08 ERA.
Villanova has had at least one player be recognized by the BIG EAST in each of the first four weeks of the 2021 campaign. In her three years as Wildcats head coach,
Bridget Orchard has seen her players garner weekly BIG EAST honors in 19 of a possible 22 weeks. Rauch has earned BIG EAST weekly recognition 16 times during her career.
Villanova's eight-game winning streak is its longest since a 17-game streak in 2016. The team has won 11 of 12 overall and will next head to Delaware for a single non-conference game on Wednesday at 3 p.m.
