The No. 11 ranked Arizona State Sun Devils defeated the No. 5 ranked UCLA Bruins 6-1 on Friday night, keeping ASU’s hopes alive of being named the Pac-12 Champions by the end of this weekend.
“It’s a great win for us. Every win from here on out is a great win, to be honest with you,” ASU head coach Trisha Ford said. “They’re all going to be hard. But it’s kind of what I like.”
Junior left-handed pitcher Lindsay Lopez started Friday night’s series opener and had a hot start. Lopez nearly went through three innings without giving up a hit before she ultimately let up a single to UCLA’s redshirt junior left-fielder Kelli Godin. Lopez bounced back, forcing redshirt senior first baseman Kinsley Washington into a groundout.
“Not much. It’s always been me against me,” Lopez said. “I’ve never looked at it as me against another team.”
Like Lopez, the Sun Devils’ bats had a strong start to the contest. Junior shortstop Alynah Torres hit a leadoff home run to left-center field on the second pitch of her at-bat. The home run immediately gave ASU the lead and the momentum.
“I just think it’s such a good momentum shift,” Torres explained about the importance of winning the first game. “The momentum is on our side right now … and just everything’s going our way right now. We just need to stay to the plan and stay with us. We need to play with each other because the only people that are going to beat us are us.”
The Sun Devils were able to get one more hit in the first before cooling off. Despite a 1-2-3 second inning, the top half of the lineup returned for the bottom half of the third inning. Once again, Torres sparked another hot inning with a leadoff double to left field. In the next at-bat, senior right fielder Yannira Acuña homered to center field, driving in Torres. The Sun Devils would tack on one more run in the inning, extending their lead to 4-0.
Then in a four-run hole in the fourth inning, the Bruins were in desperate need of a runner. Up until then, Godin was UCLA’s sole base runner, failing to make it past first base. This quickly changed in the fourth inning as redshirt senior Briana Perez hit a leadoff double to center field. ASU nearly got out of the jam, but a single by catcher Alyssa Garcia drove in Perez.
UCLA would only get four more runners on but failed to drive them home. The offensive woes resulted in quick innings, which allowed Arizona State to return to the plate that much faster.
For the second time in the game, the top half of Ford’s lineup would extend the Arizona State lead. In the fifth, Acuña hit a leadoff double to right-center field, which was ASU’s fourth double of the night. An at-bat later, junior center-fielder Jazmine Hill hit a laser to deep center fielder, which nearly took out the high center field camera. The two-run homer would mark Arizona State’s final runs of the evening.
“I think up and down our lineup, we just have the ability to hurt you, and we have a good mixture, I feel of lefties and righties,” Ford explained about her team’s hitting performance. “I just think that we are locked in right now when we’re in a good place.”
The stakes are high in this series, as the winner of the series will put themselves in control of the conference, emphasizing every game in the series. The Sun Devils will return to action on Saturday for game two against the Bruins.
“We had some bumps early on, but I kept saying, ‘we’re going to learn from this, we’re going to figure out our identity.’ I feel like it’s really starting to come together,” Ford said about ASU’s growth this season. “Obviously, tomorrow’s a new day, but I’m very pleased with kind of where we’re at.”
