By Vytas Mazeika
Daily Bruin Reporter
OKLAHOMA CITY “”mdash; In a Women’s College World Series
marked by close games, UCLA is making its best effort to break the
mold.
After the Bruins’ 6-0 victory over Louisiana State
University on Sunday in the semifinals of the WCWS, UCLA (62-5) is
still the only team to win a game by more than two runs,
accomplishing the feat twice in three games. A crowd of 4,279 was
in attendance to witness the Bruins clinch a spot in Monday’s
championship game against Arizona.
LSU (59-11), showing signs of fatigue after playing three games
in a span of 24 hours, almost saw everything fall apart early
against a fresh Bruin squad that hadn’t played since
Friday.
UCLA seemed poised to break the game wide open in the first
inning, when freshman designated player Claire Sua was at the plate
with the bases loaded and one out. But freshman center fielder
Stephanie Ramos, swiping at the dirt in front of her at third base,
was called out for stepping off the bag before the pitch was
thrown.
Sua was then hit by a pitch, and the Bruins did get one run when
senior right fielder Courtney Dale’s infield single drove in
sophomore first baseman Tairia Mims.
UCLA junior ace Amanda Freed (21-3) was on top of her game,
allowing only one hit in five innings of work while keeping the LSU
hitters off balance.
With the game still 1-0 entering the bottom of the third, the
Bruins strung together four consecutive hits to break the game wide
open. A single to left field by Sua scored pinch runner Amanda
Simpson to make it 2-0. After another RBI single, Freed drove a
double down the right field line to score two and drive Tiger
starting pitcher Ashley Lewis (21-5) out of the game.
“In that situation you’re just trying to make a
change,” LSU Head Coach Yvette Girouard said.
“Unfortunately the pitcher is the one who gets changed when
you’re trying to change something in the ballgame.”
LSU ace Britni Sneed, who the previous day had thrown 185
pitches in a 13-inning victory over Oklahoma, came in to face UCLA
sophomore third baseman Toria Auelua. On the first pitch, Auelua
lined a double over the left fielder’s glove that took one
hop, bounced off the wall and cleared the bases to give the Bruins
a 6-0 lead.
“Hitting is contagious, so once we got going we knew that
it wasn’t going to stop for a while,” Freed said.
“It’s great to get the momentum when you start
scoring runs like that and everybody gets involved,” Dale
added. “And like Amanda said, it’s just
contagious.”
The rest of the game was just semantics, as the Bruins held
their 6-0 third-inning lead the rest of the way. UCLA accomplished
its goal and took the wind out of the Tiger players.
“I would contest that if they stayed with us throughout
the game, the adrenaline actually picks up and our goal was to jump
on (Lewis) early” UCLA Head Coach Sue Enquist said.
“They’re competitors and they were going to go down
fighting, but once that door got cracked you could almost see a
little of the gas come out.”
“¢bull;Â “¢bull;Â “¢bull;
In other WCWS action, top-seeded Arizona advanced to
Monday’s championship game with a 1-0 win over Stanford.
Wildcat third baseman Toni Mascarenas had a mammoth first inning
home run that accounted for all of the scoring. Mascarenas’
third home run in the WCWS cleared the bleachers in left field. The
Cardinal used three pitchers who as a group allowed only two hits,
but Arizona’s Becky Lemke out-dueled the Stanford trio from
the circle by allowing only one hit and one walk over seven
innings.