By Brenda June Temple

Mon, Feb 12

Freshman breakout star tied for national lead in total victories with four

ROSEMONT, Ill. – Penn State softball freshman pitcher Bridget Nemeth picked up the first Big Ten Conference Pitcher of the Week accolade of the 2024 season, the league office announced Monday afternoon.

The freshman from Glendora, California, booked one of the most impressive debut weekends in Big Ten Conference history last week, earning a victory as Penn State’s pitcher of record in four of PSU’s five games at FAU’s Paradise Classic while recording a save in the fifth. Nemeth appeared in all five contests with a pair of starts, logging an astounding 1.09 ERA in a team-leading 19.1 innings pitched. Across her five appearances, Nemeth surrendered a mere 13 hits and three walks for a WHIP of 0.83, while simultaneously striking out 14 batters.

In Penn State’s nationally ranked victory over No. 16 Arkansas, Nemeth appeared in relief in the top of the seventh inning and booked 2.0 innings pitched with three strikeouts, zero walks and zero hits allowed while facing the minimum six batters. Nemeth was in the circle when PSU walked things off in the bottom of the eighth, earning the victory as a reliever in Penn State’s first nationally ranked win since downing then-No. 22 Michigan in April of 2022. Nemeth and the Nittany Lions booked a 5-0 start to the 2024 campaign, just the third 5-0 start to a season in program history and the first instance of 5-0 openings in back-to-back years all-time.

Through her first weekend of collegiate competition, Nemeth has already garnered a wide array of national acclaim. The freshman right-hander leads the Big Ten and ranks 17th among all Division I student-athletes in innings pitched, stands in seventh in the league in strikeouts and is placed fifth in the B1G in walks allowed per seven innings with 1.09. Nemeth is most notably tied for the national lead in overall victories through opening weekend and is one of just eight players in the Big Ten to have recorded a save through this early point in the 2024 campaign.

Nemeth hauled in the 17th B1G Pitcher of the Week honor in Penn State program history and became the 10th woman in Nittany Lion history to pick up the award. She is the only player since the Blue & White joined the Big Ten Conference in the spring of 1992 to earn the league’s highest weekly pitching honor as a true freshman, accomplishing that feat in the first week of her collegiate career. Nemeth earned PSU’s first Big Ten Pitcher of the Week accolade since Bailey Parshall took those honors home twice in the 2023 campaign, most recently on March 6 of last season.

The Blue & White return to the diamond in the Sunshine State of Florida next Friday through Sunday, February 16-18 at THE Spring Games in Leesburg, Florida. PSU is slated to participate in five games over its three-day stay in Central Florida, with contests scheduled against Kansas, Coastal Carolina, UC Riverside, Southern Illinois and Liberty. Streaming for all five games is available with a subscription to FloSoftball, with live statistics to be made available on the Nittany Lion softball schedule page at GoPSUsports.com.

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