No. 19 Arizona softball celebrates return home with run-rule victory over Houston
· Yahoo Sports
The No. 19 Arizona Wildcats have had a tough few weeks. They spent the last three weeks on the road, playing three games at Iowa State, three at LSU, and three at Oklahoma State. They went 4-6 over that stretch. Getting back to the friendly confines of Rita Hillenbrand Memorial Stadium was a welcome respite.
“It’s been so long,” senior shortstop Tayler Biehl said. “It feels great just to be with our fans, too. It’s just fun to see a full house here. I feel like where we’ve been, it’s just nothing like it is here at Rita. So it’s been super cool to be back with our fans and just play our game and just do what we do.”
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What they do is score runs, and they were back to that on Friday night against the Houston Cougars. Arizona defeated UH 9-1 in five innings. Biehl and fellow senior Sydney Stewart were big reasons for that offensive explosion, but several others also had big nights.
Stewart headlined the evening. She was intentionally walked her first time at the plate. When she came up the second time, first base was occupied by Regan Shockey. Houston starter Nevaeh Brown threw two balls and it looked like they were going to move Shockey into scoring position rather than test Stewart.
Then, Brown threw a strike. The unintentional intentional walk seemed off the table. Another ball was followed by a pitch Stewart could handle. It towered into the early evening sky, looking almost like a popup. It wasn’t. Instead, it landed several rows up in Candrea’s Corner for a two-run homer.
“I knew it was going,” Stewart said. “I saw Regan kind of stall a bit to wait it out, but I’m like, ‘Just go.’”
It was Stewart’s 17th home run of the year. It wasn’t the first or the last of the night for the Wildcats. It wasn’t even the last for Stewart.
The Arizona catcher came up with two on and no outs in the bottom of the fourth. This time, it went out to right-center.
“I thought both of them were out off the bat,” said Arizona head coach Caitlin Lowe. “But she did good job, because [the first] one was an offspeed and [the second] one was something hard away. So really proud of her. And Tayler, quite frankly. In that swing, she freed it up.”
“That swing” was the one that put Arizona over the limit for the run-rule victory. Biehl came up with one out and no one on. Her solo shot gave the Wildcats an eight-run lead and allowed them to close the game in the top of the fifth.
All three of those home runs came after Addison Duke broke out a bit of a mini-slump to hit her fifth home run of the year. When Arizona left for its nine-game road trip, Duke was hitting .310. She had one strong game at Iowa State to bump it up to .316, but she stalled after that.
Duke went 4-for-21 with one walk over the nine games away from Hillenbrand. When she returned home, her average had dropped to .283. She went 1-for-2 against Houston to bump it up slightly to .287.
Three Wildcats batted 1.000 against the Cougars. In addition to Stewart’s 2-for-2 with a walk and two home runs and Biehl’s 3-for-3 with a home run, Shockey went 3-for-3 with three runs scored and a stolen base.
Others may not have been perfect, but they still had big impacts. Designated player Tele Jennings has worked herself up in the order to bat cleanup and came in hitting .321. She had a 2-for-3 evening with one RBI. She ended the night with a .339 average.
Sereniti Trice helped get Stewart a pitch to hit by getting on base behind Shockey in the fourth. The second baseman may have only been 1-for-3 but that one hit was big.
Grace Jenkins was 1-for-2 with a walk and an RBI. More importantly, she set the defensive tone from the very start to help starter Jalen Adams settle in.
Adams had to battle in the first few innings. It started with Houston leadoff hitter Ariel Redmond. Redmond hit the first of three singles by the Cougars to start the game, but she wasn’t standing on base when the play was over. Jenkins stopped the ball in right-center, then threw to second from her knees. Redmond was trying to stretch a single into a double, but the ball was waiting for her. Biehl applied the tag and the hit was wiped away.
Houston put two more on after Redmond’s baserunning mistake, but Adams worked around it and her defense helped her get out unscathed.
Arizona’s offense responded immediately. Shockey singled and stole second. Trice struck out, leaving first open for the IBB to Stewart. Jennings stepped up and knocked in the first run of the game with a single.
Biehl stepped in for her first at-bat. She tried to sacrifice the runners over. It was fielded by third baseman Makenna Mitchell, but when she tried to throw to first, no one was covering. Houston’s second baseman ran down the ball to keep it on the infield, but everyone was safe. Bases loaded with one out, and Jenkins drew the walk to double Arizona’s lead.
Adams again got into trouble in the second, but she helped herself this time. Two singles put two on base with one out. BethanyAguilar hit back to the pitcher, and Adams spun to throw to third base. Jenna Sniffen then sent the ball across to first for the 1-5-3 double play. Arizona still led 2-0.
“That play can work a bunch of different ways,” Lowe said. “If her momentum takes her to two, that ball’s to two, then to one. I thought she did a really good job of just like, first of all, fielding that ball, and then second of all, staying present. Having the wherewithal to understand where she wanted to go, and then letting Jenna finish the play.”
Up Next for Arizona SoftballWho: Houston Cougars (20-29, 3-19) @ No. 19 Arizona Wildcats (32-13, 13-6)
When: Saturday Apr. 25 @ 3 p.m. MST; Sunday, Apr. 26 @ 12 p.m. MST
Where: Hillenbrand Stadium in Tucson, Ariz.
Streaming: ESPN+ (Saturday, Sunday)
Radio: 1400 AM (KTUC)
Stats: Arizona Live Stats (Saturday, Sunday)
Arizona’s two home runs in the bottom of the second made it a 5-0 game, but Houston wasn’t going to give up. The Cougars were seeing Adams fairly well, and they finally broke through in the third.
Adams didn’t even look at the ball as it exploded off Mitchell’s bat and went over the wall. After all, her team was still up 5-1. She sat the next two Cougars down and moved on.
The Wildcats’ four-run output in the bottom of the fourth put them three outs from the mercy rule victory. Adams made it happen with her second straight 1-2-3 inning.
“I thought Jalen coming in and slamming the door was really big for us,” Lowe said.
The battle for berths and seeding in the Big 12 Tournament continued around the league. While Arizona is assured a position in the eight-team tournament, it’s still up in the air where the Wildcats will be seeded. Ten of the eleven teams are still in the hunt for a trip to Oklahoma City with only Houston out of the running.
The win gave the Wildcats a .684 winning percentage and 13-6 record, putting them in second place ahead of Oklahoma State (.632/12-7) with five games to go. There’s a battle for seeds 2-6, though. It includes the Wildcats, the Cowgirls, Kansas (.600/12-8), and UCF (12-8-1/.595).
Behind that group, there’s a battle to stay in the field. Baylor is at 9-10 (.474) in sixth place. It could conceivably move up all the way to third, but it would need help. It could also fall out of the field altogether depending on what happens with Utah, Arizona State, Iowa State, and BYU.
Seventh through ninth are held by Utah (8-11-1/.425), ASU (8-11/.421), and ISU (8-12/.400). One or two of the three will not make the conference tournament. The most shocking is the Sun Devils, who came into the weekend with a No. 25 RPI. ASU also is facing the reality of having two more games against Texas Tech this weekend.
“I think it says a lot about the talent that we have, quite frankly, in our conference, top to bottom,” Lowe said. “We went through stretches of All-American pitcher on the mound against us over and over and over again, and anyone with that type of talent can beat anyone on any given day. That’s why we play the games…So these teams are 100 percent preparing us and preparing the rest of the field for the postseason…You can’t show up and give anything less than your best effort. And I think that’s the biggest thing, is like you, we have to show up as our best selves every single day if we’re going to stay on the track we want to be on.”