Before this weekend, UCLA was on fire, having won 13 straight games. That streak snapped on Thursday, with a loss to Arizona State.
With the postseason approaching, the Bruins will reveal whether their pair of losses in Tempe, Arizona, extinguished the fire or fanned the flames.
“I think it will fuel us because this feeling (of losing) is God-awful,” said sophomore shortstop Delaney Spaulding.
Freshman utility player Kylee Perez also said that the loss has the ability to help the team.
“I definitely think we’ll use (the loss) as motivation,” Perez said. “I think that we, as a team, come together after losses even more.”
The numbers back up what Spaulding and Perez had to say; the last time UCLA had a long win streak snapped, it responded with yet another one.
UCLA had won 16 of its last 17 – including 15 straight in March – going into its series against Oregon, the No. 1 team in the country.
In the first week of April, UCLA put this hot streak on the line against Oregon, the No. 1 team in the country.
The Ducks took two of three, but the Bruins answered back. After losing 10-0 to Oregon on April 5, UCLA rattled off 13 straight wins, invoking the mercy rule in seven of those games and outscoring opponents 129-39 in the process.
This past weekend, the Bruins once again took a hot streak into a weekend series against a ranked opponent. No. 6 UCLA (45-10, 19-5 Pac-12) split the first two games with No. 24 Arizona State (34-20, 12-11) but dropped the rubber match. It was the Bruins’ first series loss since the series with the Ducks.
This pattern of win streaks starting and ending with ranked teams gives some nuanced information about the team.
On one hand, it reveals that there is some truth behind what Perez said about her team’s ability to come together after a loss. If UCLA can respond to its ASU loss by embarking on another streak, then the losses in Tempe could not have come at a better time: right before the playoffs.
However, the interrupted streaks also point to one of the Bruins’ glaring weaknesses: an inability to consistently beat ranked opponents. UCLA is a near-perfect 32-1 against unranked teams, but they are 13-9 against ranked teams. Before the recent sweeps of No. 17 Arizona and No. 19 California, UCLA was only a .462 team against ranked foes.
While UCLA’s first postseason game is against an unranked team in Cal State Northridge, the Bruins could play a team that was formerly ranked as early as Saturday in the NCAA regional. That team is Texas, who defeated UCLA 5-3 back in February when the teams were ranked No. 25 and No. 12 respectively.
If the Bruins advance past this weekend’s regional round, they could host the No. 13 Missouri Tigers in the NCAA super regional round. The Bruins defeated the Tigers 8-0 in six innings the day after they lost to the Longhorns in February.
With all of those numbers in the past, coach Kelly-Inouye Perez said she is ready to let go of the regular season.
“It’s a whole new season this part of the year. You get into the last part, which is the best part,” Inouye-Perez said, whose team was upset in the NCAA super regional last year after finishing the season with a 48-6 record. “We’ve done a lot of great things. I look forward to starting fresh, wherever we are for postseason.”
UCLA’s first playoff game is Friday at 5:30 p.m. at home against CSUN. By Sunday evening, the Bruins will have a clearer picture of how the recent losses in Arizona affected them.