The Bruins flipped the script on their Pac-12 rivals.
No. 2 seed UCLA softball (53-6, 20-4 Pac-12) came out on top 6-2 over conference rival No. 6 seed Arizona (48-13, 19-5) on Friday in a Women’s College World Series matchup between two teams that have a lot of history.
“Every time there’s a UCLA-Arizona game, it is a great battle; usually a very offensive battle,” said coach Kelly Inouye-Perez. “We throw a lot of punches back and forth. You literally have to watch the game down to the last pitch.”
UCLA defeated Arizona in the WCWS finals back in 2010 to give the Bruins their 11th championship, which was the last time the two teams had played each other in Oklahoma City.
More recently, UCLA lost its only series of the regular season against Arizona just three weeks ago, dropping two of the three games and giving up all 12 runs by way of the home run.
And though Arizona hit two more home runs in Friday’s game, it was a home run from UCLA that gave the Bruins the lead, and ultimately the victory.
UCLA had struck first in the third inning, with junior center fielder Bubba Nickles starting it off with a single. After advancing to second on a walk, Nickles moved over to third when the Arizona shortstop made a fielding error, and she scored on a sacrifice fly by redshirt junior pitcher Rachel Garcia.
But Arizona evened the score at 1-1 in the bottom of the inning with a solo home run from Alyssa Palomino – the 109th of the season for the Wildcats and one more than the No. 1-seeded Oklahoma Sooners.
But with the game on the line, UCLA put in sophomore infielder Malia Quarles as a pinch hitter in the sixth inning – and she delivered. Quarles drove a solo home run to center field to give the Bruins the lead late in the game.
“I didn’t swing at the two previous pitches, so I was like ‘Well, I’m not striking out, so I’m going to hit this,'” Quarles said. “I saw the pitch right there and I was like ‘I’m swinging as hard as I can,’ and I swung, and it felt pretty good.”
The Bruins built on their lead in the top of the seventh inning, scoring four runs to secure the victory.
“We were getting on it all game, we just didn’t have our moment,” Garcia said. “We were squaring up balls, they were just going right to people. So we started making a little bit more of an adjustment and hitting it more to the gaps, and just coming up huge in moments that it was needed.”
Garcia started in the circle for the second day in a row after throwing 116 pitches in UCLA’s win over No. 7 seed Minnesota on Thursday.
The back-to-back USA Softball Player of the Year gave up four home runs in the 8 2/3 innings she pitched against the Wildcats in the regular season series, but fared much better Friday, holding Arizona to two runs on four hits over seven innings while striking out six.
UCLA will next play Sunday in the WCWS semifinals against the team that advances out of the elimination bracket in tomorrow’s elimination games. This was the point at which last year’s Bruins were eliminated, when they came into the semifinals through the winner’s bracket but fell to eventual champions Florida State two games in a row.
“We come in and do what we do,” Garcia said. “That’s what’s most important right now, we just have to be in that moment.”