With their backs up against the wall, the Bruins came close, but failed to capitalize on the opportunity to advance to the Super Regional of the NCAA tournament.
For the third straight year, UCLA softball was eliminated in the NCAA Regionals. The Bruins gave themselves a chance to advance to the next round by making it to the championship game of the Louisville Regional, but lost in a 3-2 walk-off to the Alabama-Birmingham Blazers in 13 innings.
“You leave your heart on the field and it’s always disappointing for everybody,” said assistant coach Kirk Walker. “It’s always disappointing for this program when you don’t win the whole thing.”
UCLA (40-20) had multiple opportunities to score throughout Sunday’s elimination game but left 18 runners on base. UAB only had four hits, but was able to score the winning run from first base after a walk, a force play and a triple.
“We hit a lot of balls right at people and we had some missed opportunities as well,” Walker said.
Sophomore pitcher Ally Carda surrendered the winning run after pitching the first 11 innings of the game and then being brought back in during the 13th after junior pitcher Jessica Hall walked the leadoff hitter.
“I was mentally prepared to be back in the game at any time, so when you’re out there, you’re not feeling anything, you want to keep pushing,” Carda said.
The Bruins were put in a do-or-die situation right away as they lost the first game of the regionals 6-3 to the Blazers on Friday night. They would need to win the remaining four games of the tournament to advance to the Super Regional, and nearly did so.
“I felt that playing with that type of pressure just made it more fun for us and we came out even 10 times harder,” said senior outfielder B.B. Bates.
The team bounced back on Saturday, exploding for eight runs in the final three frames against Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne in an 8-0 shutout. They followed with a mercy victory in a 19-2 demolition of 15th-seeded Louisville.
UCLA entered Sunday having to defeat UAB twice to advance to the next round. In the first game, the Bruins did not score until the sixth but a four-run inning was enough to secure the 4-1 victory.
UAB recovered in time, however, to knock UCLA out of the tournament and move on to face second-seeded Florida in Super Regionals.
The marathon second game lasted four hours and 26 minutes until a 13th-inning triple put an end to the Bruins’ season.
For Bates and fellow senior outfielder Devon Lindvall, who both won a national championship as freshmen in 2010, the loss represents the end of the road as their UCLA careers are now finished.
“I definitely saw us going all the way … it’s not the ending I pictured,” Bates said. “Things happen for a reason I guess.”
For a team that was carrying championship aspirations since the beginning of the season, the ending was anything but sweet.
“It obviously sucks, but we played our hardest, we gave it our all,” Carda said. “We went down with a hard fight.”