Devils offense falters, failing to sweep Stanford

The roller coaster season that has been 2015 for Arizona State softball (32-19, 10-10 Pac-12) took another roll downward on Sunday as they suffered a heartbreaking 4-2 loss in extra innings to the worst team in their conference, the Stanford Cardinal (17-34, 2-19 Pac-12).

ASU was trying for a much-needed series sweep of the lowly Cardinal after it lost two out of three last weekend to the Utah Utes and had won the first two games of this series by a combined score of 36-6, including a five-inning 20-0 victory on Friday night.

The offense, which had exploded even more than expected against Cardinal pitching on Friday and Saturday, simply disappeared on Sunday afternoon, managing only two runs on 12 hits and stranding 18 runners on base.

The power department, however, continued to be an area of success for ASU as junior center fielder Jennifer Soria cracked her fourth home run of the season in the fourth inning to get ASU on the board 1-0.

Junior second baseman Nikki Girard added a sacrifice fly in the fifth to score senior third baseman Haley Steele and double the Devils’ lead to 2-0.

It seemed like the pitching was going to be the shining star on this offensively-challenged day for Arizona State, but freshman starter Breanna Macha gave up a solo home run to Erin Ashby and an RBI single to Lauren Bertoy in the seventh inning which knotted the game at 2, then proceeded to surrender the walk-off two-run home run to Victoria Molina in the ninth inning. She finished her 26^th start of the year with a line of 8 1/3 innings pitched, nine hits, four runs and one strikeout with her record dropping to 15-10.

The Cardinal relief pitching ended up being the story of the game though, as senior Erin Ashby pitched beautifully in relief of sophomore Kylie Sorenson as she allowed four hits and zero runs over the final four innings before Molina’s home run.

Ashby picked up her first win of the season, finishing with eight hits, two runs (one earned) and four walks.

The loss dropped ASU to a .500 record of 10-10 in the Pac-12 conference, and they missed a key opportunity to move two games ahead in the loss column of Utah, who has been idle since defeating ASU last Sunday 4-0 in Tempe.

The Devils now sit in fifth place in the conference and will have a very tough test to face in order to improve their standing as they welcome in the second-place UCLA Bruins to Tempe to close out the regular season next weekend.

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