Alicia Hansen’s 3rd-inning home run propels Syracuse past No. 19 Notre Dame

The outfield flags at SU Softball Stadium were whipping toward the first base dugout on Friday. Temperatures hovered in the low 30s all game. Tack on the wind chill and it felt like 25 degrees — not the most suitable conditions for a home run.

So when Alicia Hansen, a freshman who entered Friday with no home runs and just one double on the season, sent a ball toward deep right center field, she was digging for a double.

“It felt like a good hit, but I’m not the biggest home run hitter,” Hansen said. “I wasn’t expecting it to go over … so by the time I realized it was over, I was like almost at second base.”

Hansen’s third inning two-run homer was the difference in Syracuse’s (15-14, 2-5 Atlantic Coast) 5-2 upset win of No. 19 Notre Dame (23-4, 3-1) on Friday at SU Softball Stadium. Her right-field home run gave the Orange a 4-2 lead that it would add to in the fifth inning, when it tacked on another run. The win over Notre Dame was Syracuse’s first over a ranked opponent this season.

Allie Rhodes, Notre Dame’s starting pitcher whom Hansen took deep, leads her team in wins, with 11, and innings pitched, with 85. She’s tallied more than one strikeout per inning, while boasting a 3.33 strikeout-to-walk ratio.

But Hansen kept her approach simple against the southpaw, saying she looked for pitches on the outer half of the plate. If the pitch came down the middle or outside, she’d swing. She only chased inside pitches with two strikes on her.

Coming off a weekend at No. 10 Florida State, the Orange had to adjust to Niagara’s slower pitching on Wednesday. During batting practice on Thursday, SU had to adjust again in preparation for Notre Dame’s faster pitching. The Orange did so by hitting off two pitching machines, one that fed only inside pitches and one that fed only outside pitches.

“(The machines) were actually a lot tougher than the pitchers actually were today purposely to get us ready for this,” Hansen said. “I was having more trouble with outside pitches yesterday, actually. I was hitting the inside one, which is the opposite (of what I normally do), but it was back to normal today.”

When Hansen dug in the box in the third inning, the Fighting Irish had just scored two runs behind two low-liners to left center. But in the bottom half of the frame, Hansen looked for a ball over the middle part of the plate that she could drive the other way.

With two outs and a runner on, Rhodes delivered a fastball middle-away and Hansen put it out. It slowed any momentum Notre Dame may have picked up in the top half of the inning and helped the Orange hand UND its first loss since Feb. 19.

“Key hits – that’s what we’ve been looking for the whole year,” said head coach Mike Bosch. “Two out, key hits.”

On Friday, Hansen delivered just that.