(Photo credit: Madison Sorenson/WCSN)
TEMPE — The recipe for Saturday’s success at Club Farrington was full of many ingredients, but none more important than pitching.
The two players of the games for Arizona State softball (15-5) were freshman righthander Julianne Tipton and senior righty Kenzie Brown. Across the span of both games, Tipton and Brown combined for a total of 12 innings pitched and 22 total strikeouts.
“Any time you play a doubleheader and both players of the games are pitchers, you’re probably going to have a pretty good day,” head coach Megan Bartlett said.
Tipton got the nod in the first game of the doubleheader for the Sun Devils and finished with a final line of five innings pitched, two earned runs and 10 strikeouts.
“I think every day’s a good day to have a good day,” Tipton said. “In the first few weekends that I played in, I feel like I was struggling a lot with timing, but I feel like I found that tonight.”
To compliment Tipton’s performance, ASU’s offense jumped on UTEP’s (10-8) pitching early and often. Sun Devil hitters knocked in eight runs in the game’s first three innings and never looked back. Junior outfielder Yannixa Acuña continued her tear after returning from injury, going 3-for-4, including two RBIs in the first inning and a stolen base.
The Miners responded with an RBI double off the bat of freshman infielder Marrissa Burchard, but the ASU offense really came alive in the third inning. Freshman outfielder Ashleigh Mejia started the inning with a first-pitch monster home run off senior pitcher Anisa Reynolds. From there, Acuña, senior utility player AJ Murphy, freshman infielder Takyla Davis and freshman infielder Tiare Ho-Ching all scored, making the score 9-1 after three stanzas.
UTEP did manage to put up another three runs throughout the last four innings, but the Sun Devils matched that with two more runs of their own. ASU defeated the UTEP Miners by a score of 11-4.
“We’re going to be aggressive. We’re going to continue to put pressure on teams,” Bartlett said
The Sun Devils took on the Utah State Aggies (12-6) in the second game of the doubleheader.
The one thing that remained a constant across both games was dominant pitching. For the second game of the night, it was Brown’s turn to dominate. Brown threw all seven innings against Utah State, only allowing one run and striking out 12 Aggie hitters. Her mixture of fastballs and off-speed pitches kept Utah State batters on their toes all game long.
“Whenever you start a ball in the zone and it looks like it’s going to be a strike but finishes out of the zone, that’s really key to what I’ve been doing,” Brown said.
Although the Sun Devils only put up four runs in the game, it was all they needed. ASU controlled the tempo of the game all night long and came out with a 4-1 victory over Utah State.
Along with the stellar pitching, the Sun Devils’ defense came to play, making zero errors in the game.
“It was nice. It felt like a complete game finally,” Bartlett said. “We pitched well, we defended well, we hit well and did some nice things on the bases.”
Half of ASU’s offense came on one swing, with graduate outfielder Kelsey Hall smashing a towering two-run home run in the third inning.
It wasn’t entirely smooth sailing Brown in the circle Saturday. In the fifth inning, Brown gave up her first run of the game on a pinch-hit RBI double by sophomore infielder Emerson Meggers.
A walk and hit-by-pitch helped load the bases with two outs in the fifth. Brown worked the count to two strikes and threw her eye-level riser once again. Sophomore catcher Kaylee Erickson swung and missed. Brown got out of the jam and picked up her 10th strikeout on the night.
Brown got through the seventh inning and secured ASU’s eighth win in a row, their longest winning streak since 2023. Pitching, along with smart hitting, propelled the Sun Devils to a Saturday doubleheader sweep.
