Fittingly, the last softball game between two Pac-12 teams was a gem.
Fittingly, the last softball game between two Pac-12 teams was a gem.
In a loser’s-bracket, must-win game Sunday night at the Women’s College World Series, UCLA and Stanford staged a game befitting the sport’s grandest conference. Great pitching. Big hitting. Clean fielding. Even late-inning drama.
In the end, the eighth-seeded Cardinal defeated the sixth-seeded Bruins 3-1.
“It was an excellent game of softball,” Stanford coach Jessica Allister said. “Great seven innings.”
UCLA ends its season with a 43-12 record.
Stanford (50-16) will play top-seeded Texas at 4 p.m. Monday, and the Cardinal must win twice to keep their season and Pac-12 softball alive.
“They’re tough,” UCLA coach Kelly Inouye-Perez said of Stanford. “NiJaree (Canady, Stanford ace) is tough. They showed up and executed.
“I wish them well as they represent the last of the Pac.”
UCLA, which swept Stanford during the regular season, came out strong Sunday, getting on the scoreboard in the second inning. Megan Grant sent a ball rocketing toward left field that hit the top of the wall and ricocheted into the bleachers. She sprinted around the bases, and when she reached home and her waiting teammates, she punctuated the homer with a huge stomp onto the plate.
The celebration was warranted.
It was the first home run given up by Canady, the national player of the year, in this Women’s College World Series. In Stanford’s first two games in Oklahoma City, she only gave up one extra-base hit, a double.
It was also the first time in Canady’s college career that she gave up a home run the first time through an opponent’s lineup.
