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

When you've been on the road for an extended period of time, there's no better feeling than returning to the friendly place known as home sweet home.
 
Home is a place where it has the feeling of comfort because of familiarity and having your supporters behind you. With a rough slate of games to begin the season, the timing couldn't be better for the Bulldogs to begin a lengthy stretch of home games than this weekend.
 
Home has indeed been a sweet place to be for the Samford softball program as they have compiled a 31-11 record at the Samford Softball Stadium since 2014 and a big reason why they have won 71 games over the past two seasons.
 
We'll get to see how sweet being at home will be for the 2016 version of the Bulldogs tomorrow against 2015 OVC Champion Tennessee Tech. Tomorrow marks the beginning of the Samford Invitational featuring Samford, Tennessee Tech and Wright State.
 
Both Tennessee Tech and Wright State made deep runs in postseason play with Tennessee Tech winning the OVC Tournament and Wright State appearing the Horizon League Championship Game last season.
 
The Golden Eagles are familiar to Samford as these two teams played every season before the Bulldogs left for the SoCon in 2009. Tennessee Tech ripped Samford's heart out last March with a double header sweep in Birmingham including a miraculous 8-7 comeback win in game one of the double header after finding themselves down 7-0 in the seventh inning.  
 
The Golden Eagles return one of the top left handers in the OVC in junior Danielle Liberatore. Liberatore carried her team to the OVC Tournament title earning Most Outstanding Player. She's struggled so far in 2016 going 1-3 out of the gate. Regardless of the early struggles, Liberatore will be one of the best strike out pitchers Samford sees all year. Last season, the southpaw pitcher fanned 283 batters and already has 32 strike outs in her four starts this season.
 
Samford's other opponent, Wright State, lost four of their first five games before winning three of five games at the Chattanooga Spring Classic. Similar to Samford, Wright State has put themselves in position to win every game this season but has lost four of their six games by one run. The Raiders ended their trip in Chattanooga with two straight victories including a 3-1 win over the Mocs in their last outing.
 
Through the first two weeks of the season, Wright State leads the Horizon League with a 1.86 team ERA. Of the three pitchers on the Wright State staff, the highest ERA is a 2.14 ERA from senior Montana Wear. Similar to Samford, a big reason that the Raiders have failed to win more games is the inability to score runs. In their six losses, the Raiders have scored 10 runs total in their six losses.
 
It'll be a big weekend on campus with Samford baseball hosting BYU for four games, women's basketball closing out the regular season with ETSU Thursday and Wofford Saturday night along with hosting the SoCon Indoor Track & Field Championships at the Birmingham CrossPlex. Be sure to come out and cheer on your Bulldogs.
 
We'll review the weekend plus preview an inner-Birmingham rivalry game with UAB in the next edition of "In the Circle".