The Bruins will face another ranked Pac-12 team this weekend.
No. 1 UCLA softball (32-1, 6-0 Pac-12) will travel to No. 21 Arizona State (25-11, 5-4) for a three-game series beginning Friday.
UCLA is coming off two consecutive sweeps over Pac-12 opponents, first against No. 6 Washington and then California last weekend. But while the Bruins won by an average of about 4.7 runs against the Huskies, they struggled to pull away from the Bears, winning two of the games by just one run.
“Last weekend, straight up, we got a sweep but we didn’t play our best ball,” said coach Kelly Inouye-Perez. “It’s great to be able to get an outcome even when you aren’t on top of your A-game, but you need to be better than how you were yesterday, gotta earn it everyday, play the game pitch-to-pitch.”
UCLA is also riding a 16-game winning streak and has lost only one game all season to then-unranked Michigan, which also defeated Arizona State earlier this season.
“We go at every team with the same game plan, which is to keep our heads down and work hard, and usually it works out for us,” said senior catcher Paige Halstead.
Despite their top-25 ranking, the Sun Devils dropped from No. 17 to 21 this week after being swept by rival No. 9 Arizona, losing by an average of six runs and failing to score a single run in the series.
But of Arizona State’s 11 losses so far this season, only two have been to unranked opponents – Missouri and Oregon State.
“They are always good every year … but I know that they lost a pitcher,” said sophomore pitcher Holly Azevedo. “It shouldn’t really matter because we are just going to play our game.”
Arizona State has had to work around losing pitcher Giselle Juarez at the end of last season after she decided to transfer to No. 2 Oklahoma. Juarez was an integral part of the rotation, finishing with a 26-6 record and a 1.22 ERA, amassing 305 strikeouts.
Juarez was one of just three pitchers from a power-five school to record 300 strikeouts last season, with one of the other three being UCLA then-redshirt sophomore Rachel Garcia. This season, none of Arizona State’s three pitchers own an ERA below 3.50, and they have combined for just 132 strikeouts. Garcia has 147 alone.
Inouye-Perez said that her pitching staff will be challenged this weekend against the Sun Devils’ offense. Arizona State is currently fourth in the country in home runs per game, averaging about 1.78, and has hit 64 homers total, good for third overall in the NCAA behind Arizona and Oklahoma.
Their team batting average of .339 ranks 10th in the nation, just behind UCLA which is sixth with a .344 average.
“They’ve been able to put up some big numbers offensively so I’m looking forward to our pitchers getting challenged,” Inouye-Perez said. “They have some offensive weapons, … but I look forward to figuring that out.”