Coach Kelly Inouye-Perez only had one word to describe the way the UCLA softball team played last weekend: ugly.
It wasn’t just that the Bruins lost two out of their three games to open the Pac-10 season against No. 7 Arizona State and No. 5 Arizona; it was the way they lost. The Bruins had nine errors last weekend (four in the Friday loss to Arizona State and five in the Sunday loss to Arizona) and only seven hits.
“We didn’t get beat this last weekend, we beat ourselves,” Inouye-Perez said.
The No. 12 Bruins (25-9, 1-2 Pac-10) will attempt to correct their defensive woes starting with today’s game against the Washington Huskies (23-9, 1-2), who are tied with the Bruins in the polls at No. 12.
“There’s going to be bumps in the road,” senior shortstop Jodie Legaspi said. “We all have to realize that we’re in it for the end, and we’re practicing to prepare each week for stuff that we’re going to face later on in the season.”
Last season, UCLA committed just 48 errors as a team in 59 games. This season, the Bruins have played just 34 games so far, but have already made 45 errors as a team.
Part of the reason for the drop-off defensively is the shuffling of their defense at the beginning of the year. The Bruins start three freshmen in the field this season and have moved Lisa Dodd from first base to primarily second base. That is quite a change for a team that has looked nearly identical defensively for three years prior to this season. But for Inouye-Perez, it’s no excuse.
“When you bring new people in and you have freshmen come in and step in, you just don’t have that comfort zone,” Inouye-Perez said. “That’s not the reason that you don’t make a play though. Physical errors are happening and the fact that we’re not able to detach one from the other emotionally is disappointing because that’s softball 101.”
Perhaps the most frustrating thing about the defense this past weekend was that the Bruins had been making progress prior to this weekend.
After a rocky beginning, the Bruins had won 12 out of 13 games leading into last weekend in which the errors were down considerably from the start of the season.
“When you get sloppy and you play with emotion, then it can turn into a really bad snowball effect,” Inouye-Perez said. “We’re going back to the fundamentals. I’m applying pressure on them to try to practice a game-like scenario and they are responding.”
The Bruin offense, which had been so hot prior to the team’s 11-day break for finals, has also gone cold. In their six games since coming back, the Bruins have yet to score more than three runs in a game.
Against Washington sophomore Danielle Lawrie, one of the 25 national Player of the Year candidates, the task doesn’t get any easier.
“We have a lot of respect for (Lawrie),” Inouye-Perez said, “On any given day she can stop any team.”
But for UCLA, there is plenty of faith that the offense will come around. For the Bruins right now, it’s all about correcting the mental mistakes on the defensive end.
“Defense wins championships,” Inouye-Perez said. “We all know that. If we focus on our defense, it will improve our chances to get back on track and play UCLA softball.”