Bruins use 7 extra-bases hits, 5 walks to put Lopes in Saturday’s elimination.
(Los Angeles, CA) Grand Canyon softball was looking for lightning to strike twice with another NCAA regional upset of UCLA, but the Lopes got caught in a storm of drives to and over the Easton Stadium wall
After upsetting UCLA in last year’s Los Angeles Region, GCU opened their return and rematch Friday night by surrendering seven extra-base hits for a 9-0 loss to No. 6 UCLA in front of a baby blue-plastered crowd of 1,256 fans.
The loss sends the Lopes (48-12) to a Saturday 4:30 p.m. elimination game against Mountain West champion San Diego State (31-19), which lost 6-1 to No. 17 Virginia Tech earlier Friday at Easton Stadium. The winner will play another Saturday elimination game against the UCLA-Virginia Tech loser for a spot in Sunday’s championship round.
GCU was allowing 1.5 runs per game in its past four games but UCLA’s red-hot offense stayed ablaze with bases-loaded, no-out situations in the first two innings.
Lopes starter Hailey Hudson escaped the first inning with only a RBI sacrifice fly for damage, but the Bruins (38-10) scored five second-inning runs with two-time Pac-12 Player of the Year Maya Brady’s two-run double and the first of catcher Sharlize Palacios’ two opposite-field home runs into the right-field pine trees.
Five Bruins reached base on full-court walks (four) or hit by pitch in the first two innings to extend UCLA’s scoring chances and, ultimately, its nine-game winning streak.
“I wish we would’ve got off to a better start and given ourselves a chance, especially early in the tournament when you face great arms like KT,” GCU head coach Shanon Hays said of UCLA freshman Kaitlyn Terry, who struck out seven and allowed two hits without a walk in five innings. “You better pitch it well back at them and stay in the game and create some breaks. When we let the game get away from us, we just didn’t pitch it as well as we usually do.
“We’re going to have to bounce back tomorrow and get back to who we think we are. Hopefully, it’ll be a long day.”
When GCU limited UCLA’s first-inning threat to one run, the Lopes followed it up with consecutive one-out hits from senior shortstop Katelyn Dunckel and junior center fielder Makaiya Gomez.
“We’ve played a lot of good teams this year,” Gomez said. “You just try not to let the moment get above you. Just take it one pitch at a time, one breath at a time and do what you can for your team and try to get something going.”
Dunckel belted a 2-2 pitch off the foot of the left-center field wall, but it was fielded perfectly to hold her to a single in the shallow park. Gomez followed with her 15th double of the season off the left-field wall, but the pair was stranded on two Terry strikeouts.
The Lopes entered Friday night with the ninth-best batting average in the nation but were kept from another hit, preventing them from using their hit-and-run and base-stealing strengths to apply pressure. GCU only had been shut out once this season (vs. Texas State on Feb. 25) and scored 13 and 15 runs in two wins the next day.
“I felt like we were starting to put a little pressure on them, and then the big inning came for them,” Hays said, “It’s a lot easier to pitch when you don’t have a lot of pressure. Then she drowned us and started putting her change-up in good spots, pitching in and out and up. We didn’t keep the pressure on them by getting that big hit early and keeping the games close.”
Sophomore pinch-hitter Brynn-Jordan Smythe had a line drive stabbed by Brady in the third, and graduate right fielder Kristin Fifield was stranded in the fourth after being hit by a pitch with one out.
The game ended on Palacios’ second home run, also her eighth home run in the past 14 games. It marked the first time that GCU had suffered a run-rule loss since two years ago at its first NCAA Division I regional, when the Bruins handed the Lopes a 12-1 loss.
“We’ve been talking about this for a long time,” UCLA head coach Kelly Inouye-Perez said. “We’ve been talking about keep our eyes on the prize.
“Here we are, when we wanted to be at our best. The first game is always a big one in the history of the program. As long as I’ve been here, we’re fortunate to go to preseason every year, and Game 1 is always the big one and I’m so proud how you guys came out. They had fun today. There’s been some tight games and some really unfortunate games, so I can tell you today was the biggest game of our season.”
GCU is also having a NCAA regional rematch with San Diego State in the Saturday elimination game, which will start 35 minutes after the 2 p.m. UCLA-Virginia Tech games ends if the 4:30 p.m. schedule is not possible.
The Lopes lost 6-0 to the Aztecs at last year’s regional and took an 8-4 loss to San Diego State on March 8 in Long Beach, California. GCU posted a four-run sixth inning in the game, which featured Aztecs pitchers Cece Cellura (six innings) and Dee Dee Hernandez (one inning) not allowing a run.
GCU used four pitchers Friday night but did not throw junior Meghan Golden, who is 12-3 this season with a team-best 1.90 ERA.
“Toughness is bouncing back from getting whooped up on a little bit,” Hays said. “We want to be tough and come out with a good approach tomorrow, and I’m confident we will.”
Press Release courtesy of Grand Canyon University Athletics – Paul Coro
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