Dowdy, Matthews Named 2nd Team All BSC

RADFORD, VA. – Charleston Southern juniors Morgan Dowdy and Jana Matthews were named Second-Team All-Big South Conference, it was announced Wednesday night at the Dedmon Center on the campus of Radford University during the annual softball awards banquet.

CSU senior Kristin Kelleher also earned another accolade, as the 2012 Big South Woman of the Year nominee was selected to the conference’s All-Academic Team. Kelleher finished as runner-up for Scholar-Athlete of the Year as well, while Bucs’ head coach Shane Winkler received one first place vote for Big South Coach of the Year to finish behind only Radford’s Mickey Dean for that distinction.

Radford shortstop Nichole Beall was selected as Big South Player of the Year for the second consecutive season, while Highlanders’ junior Jackie Jenkins was voted Big South Pitcher of the Year by the league’s head coaches.

Dowdy finished her sophomore season on a high note, and followed it up with a brilliant junior campaign which saw her finish among the Big South leaders in wins (2nd), innings pitched (3rd), games (2nd), saves (T-1st), starts (1st), shutouts (T-5th), and complete games (T-1st). Dowdy wrapped up the regular season at 17-12 with a 2.01 ERA over 219 innings, and struck out 145 batters, the 2nd highest single-season total in CSU history. She was twice named the Big South Pitcher of the Week, highlighted by a March 19-25 run which saw her go 4-0 with a save while allowing only four earned runs over 29 innings as the Bucs recorded a win over Ohio, a doubleheader sweep of Savannah State, and a three-game sweep of Winthrop to open Big South play.

Matthews continued to help anchor the middle of the CSU lineup as a junior, finishing the year with a team-high 28 RBI while scoring 23 more runs herself (2nd on the team). The Boonville, North Carolina native got her season off to a hot start in the Bucs’ sweep of Furman, going 5-for-9 with 5 RBI and a run scored. Matthews launched three more home runs and now has 22 for her career (3 behind Megan Lombard for CSU program record), and belted a key two-run blast on April 13 as the Bucs clinched a key two-out-of-three series victory over a Big South rival.

Kelleher ranked in the Big South’s top-10 in walks and on-base percentage, and led CSU in conference-only batting with a .317 average. The Springfield, Va. native graduated last Saturday with a 3.48 GPA as a criminal justice major, was named a CSU Scholar-Athlete honoree seven times, and earned an induction into the Alpha Phi Sigma Criminal Justice Honor Society in the spring of 2011

CSU earned the No. 3 seed in the Big South Tournament, and opens play Thursday at 2 p.m. against sixth-seeded Liberty. The Bucs took two out of three from the Flames in Lynchburg on April 6-7. The double-elimination tourney begins Thursday at 9 a.m., and will conclude Sunday with a 12 noon title contest to be televised live on ESPNU. The winner of the Big South Tournament earns an automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament.