Mattison Buster did something no Southland Conference pitcher had done in five years this past weekend, earning her a second SLC Pitcher of the Week award, the league office announced Monday.
The ace of the Northwestern State softball pitching staff helped carry the Demons (14-15 overall, 4-2 SLC) to a 3-1 record this past week, tossing two more complete games and picking up all three wins for her team to give her a conference-leading 12 on the season. Two wins came in the SLC series at the Demon Diamond over McNeese, a team that no SLC pitcher had beaten twice in a weekend series since 2021.
Her dozen-win total already matches the most by an NSU pitcher in a season over the past eight years, tying Maggie Darr (2023) and Emma Callie Delafield (2021) with nearly two months left to play.
While impressive on its own, the performance she gave in Saturday’s series finale against McNeese cemented her as one of the top pitchers in the Southland Conference this year.
In perhaps the most dominant performance of her career, Buster threw 5.2 perfect innings to open the game and faced just one batter over the minimum in a 10-inning, one-hit shutout to give the Demons their first series win over McNeese since 2015.
Buster retired the first 17 batters before a two-out single in the sixth inning. She sat down the final 10 batters in a row before freshman Mckenna Rinewalt’s walk-off single gave the Demons a 1-0 win in extra innings.
The one hit allowed was the fewest produced in a conference game by the Cowgirls since 2021, and combined with her complete game win the night before, made Buster the first pitcher since 2021 to win two games in the same series against McNeese.
The now two-time conference pitcher of the week threw 17.0 innings across two games against the Cowgirls, holding a lineup that came in batting .328 on the season to a miniscule .140 average for the weekend.
The weekend outings overshadowed a 4.0 inning one-hit performance earlier in the week at Grambling where she allowed just two baserunners on the way to a combined shutout with Erin Kirkland, after Buster threw four innings.
For the week Buster went 3-0 in three starts with a 1.67 ERA, throwing two complete games and 21.0 innings with 12 strikeouts, only four walks, and held opposing hitters to a .130 batting average.
Through six weeks of the season, Buster ranks in the top 10 in the country in complete games (10), games started (16), fewest hit batters (2), innings pitched (103.1), pitching appearances (22), shutouts (4) and wins (12).
Northwestern travels to Southeastern for a SLC series against the other top-tier team in the league Friday and Saturday.
