(Photo via Nicole Mullen/WCSN)
Arizona State Softball went through two different stories in Saturday’s doubleheader against Iowa State at Farrington Stadium, but both ended with the same result: a victory for the Sun Devils.
The first game was a low-scoring battle between the two squads in which ASU needed every hit it could muster for the 2-1 win. The Sun Devils made some tweaks for the second game and dominated throughout, scoring at least two runs an inning for four straight innings en route to a 9-4 win. With Saturday’s results, the Sun Devils complete the weekend sweep of the Cyclones (6-6) and move to 11-2 on the season.
Junior right-hander Mac Osborne started the day for the Sun Devils, and she showed both the pros and cons of her game in her 4.2 innings of work. She gave up four hits and one run during her time in the circle, but some of the hits given up may have been avoidable. This is evidenced by two HBPs she recorded in the first and third inning. The one in the third helped Iowa State score its only run of the game, as the Cyclones got on base with a bunt right after. Iowa State got runners on first and second with no outs and turned it into one run.
Osborne has now hit the batter with a pitch six times this season, but head coach Megan Bartlett thinks this is inevitable based on Osborne’s skillset.
“She bends the ball as well as anybody in Division I softball, so people are going to get hit,” Bartlett said. “What she does is really, really elite. You can’t teach people to spin the ball with that force, power and torque, so we just treat it like it’s honestly part of the game like it’s a regular walk, and those are going to happen.”
The rest of the fifth inning and the sixth was pitched by sophomore right-hander Kenzie Brown, before graduate student right-hander Marissa Schuld closed in the seventh. Brown gave up one hit, and Schuld let a batter walk, but they combined for three strikeouts to keep the Cyclones at bay.
Offensively, the Sun Devils could not find the rhythm in the small ball that allowed them to rack up runs last weekend. They recorded five hits through seven innings, never having two runners on base at once. However, the Sun Devils bailed themselves out with some big hitting.
Senior infielder Jordyn VanHook was the first to strike, crushing a home run into left field to put ASU on the board. The Sun Devils later took the lead in the sixth when junior outfielder Emily Cazares hit a home run into right field in ASU’s first at-bat of the inning, and it could not have come at a better time. The Sun Devils took advantage of Cazares’ second home run of the season and closed out the Cyclones in the top of the seventh.
The second game started similarly for the Sun Devils on offense, as they went scoreless through two innings with only one hit recorded. This time, it was the Cyclones who made the first move via a home run from junior outfielder Milaysia Ochoa.
ASU did not trail for long, as its offense became unstoppable for the remainder of the night. It started in the third when the Sun Devils scored three runs thanks to a double from graduate outfielder Yannira Acuña and some errors from the Cyclones. A triple into right field from Cazares in the fourth allowed two more runners to score.
VanHook then launched a home run far into left field in the fifth inning. It was her first of the game and second of the day, but she was not done. In the sixth inning, she hit yet another homer, this time to center field.
VanHook, who was named Pac-12 Player of the Week for her performance last weekend at the Littlewood Classic, now has nine home runs on the season, which is four more than she had in her first three years as a Sun Devil. VanHook admits that it is different getting recognition, but her mindset has not changed.
“I’ve never had any recognition like this before, so it’s honestly really different and cool,” VanHook said. “I’m just taking it day-by-day and not letting (the pressure) get to me. I know what I still need to work on. … I just know if (I’m) going down, I know 100% someone’s going to pick me back up, and that’s what I love about our lineup because it’s positive at any given movement.”
By the end of the sixth inning, ASU had taken a 9-2 lead. From the third inning on, the Sun Devils recorded 11 hits, four walks, seven RBIs and nine runs. Bartlett said that her team needed to reset and stay composed to get better results than the first game.
“We were just chasing the up-ball too much, and the reality is, that tends to, for whatever reason in our sport, get contagious,” Bartlett said. “You get one or two older kids to chase rise balls and watch the rest of them fall like dominoes. … For us, I think we just needed a mental reset.”
Meanwhile, the Sun Devils did enough to limit the Cyclones on the other side of the ball. After Schuld opened, Jones pitched from the second inning until the last, giving up four hits in five innings while attaining three strikeouts. Besides a home run from freshman infielder Paige Nakashima, Iowa State failed to get any runs on the board until the final inning, as the defense did not record an error in either game until then.
However, the team did lose focus in the seventh, recording a fielding error and a throwing error that helped the Cyclones plate two more runs. Bartlett knows that ASU’s competition will only get tougher from this point on, and she emphasized how important it is for the team to be focused from the first pitch to the last.
“Our message to them is ‘We have to stay locked in every pitch. We have to stay focused. We have to stay present,’” Bartlett said. “Sweeps, I can promise you, are really tough to get in this sport right now, and they are never pretty. … The message to the kids is ‘Be ready because people are coming for you now.’”
