It’s going to be a busy week for the Massachusetts softball team.

The Minutewomen will play three more away games this season, beginning with a matchup against Connecticut on Wednesday, and then the squad will return to the UMass Softball Complex for three-consecutive games against Fairfield and Syracuse on Thursday and Friday.

UMass will meet all three opponents for the first time in 2011, as it currently rides an eight-game winning streak. The Minutewomen haven’t lost a game in almost a month and enters the contest winners of 10 of its last 11 games.

Junior ace Sara Plourde has shown impressive skill, throwing 171.2 innings while recording a 1.39 earned run average and nearly 300 strikeouts en route to a 15-10 record. She has given up 49 runs and opponents are hitting .138 against her.

Plourde hasn’t lost a game she’s started since a doubleheader on March 26 against Temple. In that contest she was hit hard and gave up six earned runs on five hits. However, she struck out a number of Owl batters (13), but she also walked seven and allowed all seven of Temple’s runs in the bottom of the first inning.

Since then, Plourde has been nothing short of automatic on the mound, and a lot of that has to do with coming back to Amherst.

The Maroon and White have lost 17 games at home since 2000 and are undefeated at UMass Softball Complex thus far in 2011. The offense, defense and pitching have all emerged from their early-season slumps, and now that the squad is playing and practicing outside on their home turf, the results have spoken for themselves.

“There’s no place like home,” UMass head coach Elaine Sortino said in an interview last week.

That could be bad news for the rest of the Atlantic 10 when conference play resumes in May. Of their 17 losses in home history, only five of them have come against conference opponents, and in 13 A-10 tournament games at the UMass Softball Complex, the Minutewomen have won 11 times.

The offense has also heated up in the warmer weather and the defense has improved dramatically since the team began playing games at home. During its current eight-game winning streak UMass has won four games by a run margin of at least four, and in its most recent contests, the offense has tallied seven and nine runs, respectively.

Lindsey Webster leads all Minutewomen in batting and home runs, hitting .323 at the plate with four round-trippers and 15 runs batted in. Right behind her is Audrey Boutin, who is batting .301 with 12 RBIs.

Early season defensive woes are behind the Minutewomen as well. Where they were making as many as four or five errors in a single game early on, the Minutewomen have now cut that number to about one per game.

UMass has lit up at the plate throughout half of its winning streak, but the remaining four games were all one-run contests, including a pair of 1-0 victories.

The week begins with Wednesday’s 4 p.m. matchup against the Huskies in Storrs, Conn. The team will then play in Amherst on Thursday at 5 p.m. against Fairfield, followed by a 2 p.m. doubleheader against the Orange on Friday.

Michael Wood can be reached at [email protected].