(Photo: Joey Plishka/WCSN)
No. 21 Arizona State softball finished off the Littlewood Classic with a dominating victory over visiting UTEP 10-0 in five innings at Farrington Stadium on Sunday.
Senior utility Mailey McLemore’s walk-off, two-run home run sealed the deal and sent the Farrington faithful home happy.
“I just wanted something over the plate, something I could drive just trying to hit something hard,” McLemore said.
ASU finally got what head coach Trisha Ford wanted: a complete game in all three aspects – hitting, pitching and defense.
“We were squaring up some balls but it still took us a bit to get going offensively,” Ford said. “Good defense and pitching.”
Ford credited the victory to the entirety of the roster, including those who came off the bench. With the roster sitting at just 19 players, the shortest roster in Ford’s tenure, she knows that all 19 of them will be valuable.
“I think we have four outfielders that should all be starting, we’re going to use our whole bench,” Ford said. “We had the ability to keep rotating our DP spot and you don’t know what will happen throughout the year, whether someone gets hot or hurt so you have to be ready.”
It started in the circle when freshman right-handed pitcher Mac Morgan. She had two on with one out, and Ford made a rare first inning appearance to the circle.
“I just told her to pound the zone,” Ford said. “I wanted her to get her head right, do what she could do, trust it and get us back in the dugout and she responds really well to clearing her head like that.”
She then got a groundout from freshman infielder Kaylin Jackson and proceeded to throw three more scoreless innings allowing just three hits in 15 batters faced.
The Sun Devils initially struggled with UTEP junior starter Zalie Calderon. She allowed a pair of walks to start the second inning, but was able to wiggle out of danger to keep the ASU bats at bay.
“It was a different type of pitching tonight,” Ford said. “She did a good job of spinning it tonight and mixing speeds. She’s crafty.”
The maroon and gold bats finally got going in the third. Back-to-back hits by junior outfielder Jazmine Hill and senior outfielder Yanni Acuña put runners on second and third. A pair of productive outs via the sacrifice fly from freshman infielder Cydney Sanders and junior infielder Alynah Torres gave the Sun Devils a 2-0 lead.
Redshirt freshman infielder Kristiana Watson was then hit by a pitch, setting up senior infielder Jazmyn Rollin’s two-run home run that doubled the lead to 4-0.
“That felt good, it felt good to finally get my stroke rolling along,” Rollin said. “Everything is feeling right and on time.”
Rollin said that tonight she felt she needed to have a better approach and it certainly paid off with the big fly.
“I missed two right down the middle in my first at bat and I needed to have a better approach,” Rollin said. “The first strike I saw I knew I needed to swing hard. I just needed to see the ball and hit the ball.”
Postgame, she gave a self-evaluation of what she has learned over the first 10 games of the season.
“I’m really getting deep into my counts so I need to attack early, I struggle deep into counts,” Rollin said. “If I attack early and throw the first punch, I’ll be okay.”
Sunday funday kept going as sophomore outifelder Emily Cazares and Hill went back-to-back to increase that lead to 6-0.
Senior pitcher/utility Marissa Schuld shut the door in the top half of the 5th setting up the walk-off dramatics in the bottom half.
“I thought she did a great job, I thought she came in and pounded the zone well and executed her changeup,” Ford said.
Through 10 games, Ford still says her team is coming along, but is excited for the improvement.
“I think we are still a project and I think we have a lot of good pieces but the puzzle is not together yet,” Ford said. “Pitching wise, I think it’s nice to have more depth than we’ve had in a lot of years and we have a lot of options.”
McLemore agrees that the improvement is there.
“I think we are getting progressively better each and every game,” McLemore said. “We’re going in the right direction which is very good.”
ASU heads to the University of Texas Tournament next weekend, and Ford is looking forward to going on the road.
“This will be good for us because we’ll deal with some weather and we’ll feel uncomfortable,” Ford said. “All those things are good for us and all the teams we play are solid programs.”
