The No. 1 UCLA softball team heads into its second weekend of Pac-10 play with a comfortable assurance about how its season has unfolded. The Bruins are 32-3 overall and remain undefeated in Pac-10 play with four wins after sweeping the Oregon schools and defeating Washington on Wednesday.
Today, the Bruins take on No. 7 Stanford, a team that beat them twice last year and won four of the last five matchups between the two squads. Yet the new members of the team leave coach Kelly Inouye-Perez confident in her team’s ability.
“If you look at the rosters … we’re all very different from last year,” Inouye-Perez said. “We walk in with a clean slate.”
The Bruins will take on No. 21 Cal on Saturday and Sunday. Last season, the Bruins took two of the three games against the Bears, yet the one loss came at home.
The Bruins as a team are approaching the games with a similar attitude as Inouye-Perez.
They want to put the past behind them.
“This is a new year,” senior pitcher Anjelica Selden said. “I don’t look at last year at all. I used to in the beginning. I’m on a mission this year and looking back is just going to hold me back from anything I want to accomplish this year.”
While Inouye-Perez is satisfied with her team’s progress, she wants to continue to see improvement in the team’s pitching over the weekend, emphasizing the need to limit the number of free bases given to the opposing team. In order to accomplish this goal, the pitchers are working hard in practice to prepare.
“A lot of my preparation personally is trying to make every pitch game-like,” Selden said. “Every practice we’ll work on our pitching and being consistent with the pitches.”
Offensively, Inouye-Perez is confident as well.
“I’m pleased with what they did, but we can always work on moving runners,” Inouye-Perez said. “The bottom line is you never stop fighting until the last out. We’re in the Pac-10; it’s a matter of being able to fight from the first pitch to the last pitch. I want them to continue to do that.”
Freshman GiOnna DiSalvatore has been instrumental in keeping the Bruins on top offensively, and sees team unity as key.
“As a team we need to come together and come up with a plan and execute it,” DiSalvatore said. “We need to come out ready to hit, and not so much swing at the first pitch, but seeing more pitches.”
While the Bruins have had a successful start to the season and sit atop the Pac-10 standings, the team is wary of the challenges they will face the next few days. And at the end of the weekend, the Bruins hope they will remain in that top spot.
“Both Cal and Stanford have had a great preseason,” Inouye-Perez said. “I think that they are both going to be able to pose some challenges, which I think is great for us, especially at this time of the year. For us, it’s time for us to really sharpen our competitive edge.”
DiSalvatore agrees with Coach Inouye-Perez’s outlook on the season as a whole.
“Now that we are in the Pac-10, we are seeing better teams and better competition,” DiSalvatore said. “Being able to win these games, we should be able to win all the other games as well.”