For the ASU softball team, making an annual summer trip to Oklahoma City has become the routine under coach Clint Myers.
But the 2009 Sun Devils could not match the program’s national title run from a year ago, as they fell to Washington 1-0 in eight innings on Friday and Alabama 6-2 on Saturday to be eliminated from the Women’s College World Series.
“It’s disappointing,” ASU freshman pitcher Hillary Bach said. “It’s not the outcome we were hoping for, but we have a very promising future and a lot of potential still left.”
After racking up 13 hits in their 7-3 win over Missouri in the first game in Oklahoma City, the Sun Devil bats went quiet in the next two games.
ASU mustered just six hits and two runs total in the pair of losses to the No. 3 Huskies (48-12) and No. 4 Crimson Tide (54-11).
“We just kind of put some extra pressure on ourselves that we didn’t need to,” ASU senior outfielder Kaitlin Cochran said. “We just couldn’t get any hits strung together when we needed it.”
The No. 10 Sun Devils (47-19) got on the board first in Saturday’s elimination game against Alabama when junior infielder Katie Crabb hit a two-run homer in the fourth inning to put ASU up 2-0.
But the Crimson Tide answered in the bottom of the inning when it took advantage of some uncharacteristic control problems for Bach. She walked two batters and hit another in the inning, which loaded the bases for freshman pinch-hitter Jazlyn Lunceford.
Lunceford blasted a 2-2 pitch into the leftfield bleachers, giving Alabama the 4-2 lead on the first grand slam of Lunceford’s career.
“I gave up way too many free passes, and you can’t give a great team free opportunities,” Bach said. “One hit wouldn’t have hurt us, but it was just the three free tickets that I gave up before that that did the damage.”
Alabama added two more unearned runs in the fifth inning, while ASU got just one runner on base after the fourth inning.
Bach only allowed four hits on the night, but she walked four and hit three batters on her third straight day in the circle.
“I wasn’t tired, [so] I don’t want to blame [my performance] on that at all,” Bach said. “I just made that mistake of getting too tight and trying to place the ball, and I wasn’t being myself.”
ASU fell into the loser’s bracket matchup with Alabama after dropping an extra-inning, classic pitchers’ duel to UW on Saturday.
Bach went toe-to-toe with UW junior Danielle Lawrie, the National Player of the Year, as each ace put zero after zero up on the scoreboard through seven innings.
“There’s nothing more that we could have asked out of Hillary,” Cochran said. “We just wish we could have gotten the bats going for her that night, because she was pitching so well. I felt like Hillary really grew up that day. To do that at the World Series as a freshman, it’s just phenomenal and amazing.”
The Huskies finally broke through in the eighth inning when a leadoff double by freshman outfielder Kimi Pohlman came around to score on an RBI single by sophomore shortstop Morgan Stuart.
Lawrie allowed just two hits in her eight-inning shutout.
The pair of cold offensive days came just after a strong performance by the Sun Devil bats against MU on Thursday.
The Sun Devils scored three runs in each of the first two innings off of MU freshman pitcher Chelsea Thomas to jump out to an early 6-0 lead they never relinquished.
“It was very important for us to make that statement, [because MU] beat a lot of good teams to get to the World Series,” Cochran said. “When a team is on fire like that, you have to get to them early.”
Freshman designated player Taylor Haro had four hits and drove in three runs, while senior outfielder Jessica Mapes notched four infield singles and scored two runs.
Meanwhile, Bach earned her seventh postseason victory and did not show signs of jitters in her first career WCWS start in her home state.
“I was surprisingly comfortable,” Bach said. “For the upperclassmen who have been there before and all the coaches, [playing in the WCWS] is normal to them, so it kind of helped that they were acting like it was no big deal. It was easy for me not to make a big deal out of it.”
ASU loses just four seniors from the 2009 squad, but one of them is Cochran, who ends her decorated Sun Devil career as statistically the best hitter in program history.
“I couldn’t have asked for a better college career, both academically and athletically,” Cochran said. “I love this team, I love our program and I love representing ASU.”
Reach this reporter at gina.mizell@asu.edu
