An ongoing series of a bi-weekly blog from the voice of Samford softball play-by-play announcer James Hardy.

With the first weekend of the season in the bag, the Samford Bulldogs look to improve upon last weekend's effort as they return to the Alabama Gulf Coast for another challenging slate of games as part of South Alabama's Mardi Gras Invitational.
 
The Mardi Gras Invitational features two NCAA regional teams in 2015 Sun Belt Tournament Champion South Alabama and Mississippi State along with 2015 OVC regular season champion SIU-Edwardsville and Southern Miss.
 
Samford opens the weekend with SIUE on Friday afternoon. Both teams squared off in Auburn last season with SIUE defeating Samford 7-2. SIUE had a similar opening weekend to Samford with a competitive start to the season despite losing three of five games. SIUE split a pair of games with Penn State, edged Wright State on Sunday and lost to Hofstra and FAU.
 
The Cougars are a young team with only three seniors compared to six freshmen and six sophomores including a pair of sophomore pitchers. Sophomore Ashley Koziol leads SIUE with a 1.72 ERA. Koziol has recorded a pair of games going at least seven innings including a start against Penn State where she threw 8.1 innings without allowing an earned run despite picking up the loss.
 
A rebuilding Southern Miss program awaits the Bulldogs for a 9 a.m. Saturday first pitch. The Golden Eagles are led by second year head coach Wendy Hogue. Hogue is looking to build the Southern Miss softball program after leading William Carey to a pair of NAIA Final Four appearances. First baseman Katie Cleary is carrying the Southern Miss offense this season with 12 RBIs including a 5 RBIs in game two of a doubleheader Wednesday against Alabama State and 4 RBIs against Ball State last Saturday.
 
The back half of the Mardi Gras Invitational looks to be a challenge with #23-ranked South Alabama and Mississippi State, who is receiving votes. Both teams come in undefeated after stellar opening weekends.
 
The Jaguars have started the season in dominant fashion with shutouts of UAB, Ball State and Central Arkansas. Sophomore pitcher Devin Brown has lead the dominance with lights out pitching. Brown has a 3-0 record while not allowing a run in 17 innings pitched.
 
Samford concludes the weekend with Mississippi State on Sunday. The Bulldogs from Starkville are built on speed. They stole 101 bases as a team last season led by Loryn Nichols with 34 steals. Through their first five games, Mississippi State has already swiped 12 bases as a team.
 
With pitching carrying Samford last week, it will be interesting to see how Mollie Hanson and Jessica Stone build off successful starts from the circle, but the area to look for this weekend will be at the plate.
 
Samford's offense left Gulf Shores on a high note and is looking to carry it over this weekend in Mobile. The area to look for this week is the ability of Megan Dowdy and Shelby Maze to get on base. Much like last season, when Dowdy and Maze get on base, good things typically happen with the Bulldogs offense. Against Belmont, the duo reached base six times while scoring 4 of the 10 Bulldog runs and driving home 5 of Samford's 8 RBIs.
 
In the next edition of "In the Circle", we'll recap the weekend in Mobile.