OKLAHOMA CITY — Fittingly, the last softball game between two Pac-12 teams was a gem.
In a loser’s-bracket, must-win game Sunday night at the Women’s College World Series, UCLA and Stanford staged a game befitting the sport’s grandest conference. Great pitching. Big hitting. Clean fielding. Even late-inning drama.
In the end, the eighth-seeded Cardinal defeated the sixth-seeded Bruins 3-1.
UCLA ends its season with a 43-12 record.
Stanford (50-16) will play top-seeded Texas at 4 p.m. Monday, and the Cardinal must win twice to keep their season and Pac-12 softball alive.
UCLA, which swept Stanford during the regular season, came out strong Sunday, getting on the scoreboard in the second inning. Megan Grant sent a ball rocketing toward left field that hit the top of the wall and ricocheted into the bleachers.
She sprinted around the bases, and when she reached home and her waiting teammates, she punctuated the homer with a huge stomp onto the plate.
The celebration was warranted.
It was the first home run given up by Stanford ace and national player of the year NiJaree Canady in this Women’s College World Series. In Stanford’s first two games in Oklahoma City, she only gave up one extra-base hit, a double.
It was also the first time in Canady’s college career that she gave up a home run the first time through an opponent’s lineup.
UCLA continued hitting Canady hard in the third with a Janelle Meono single to left and a Jadelyn Allchin single to right. But the Bruins failed to push across a run.
It would come back to haunt them.
Stanford answered UCLA’s fireworks in the third inning.
Taryn Kern drove a double into the left-field gap that one hopped the wall and scored Emily Jones. That prompted a UCLA pitching change as Taylor Tinsley replaced Kaitlyn Terry.
But Stanford wasn’t done.
Ava Gall sent a single into right field, and Kern just beat out the throw home to give the Cardinal a 2-1 lead.
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Stanford added to its lead in the fifth inning, opening the frame with back-to-back singles, then pushing a run across on Allie Clements’ sacrifice fly to left.
That was more than enough run support for Canady, who got out of a seventh-inning jam with two on and two out when she forced a game-ending groundout. She went the distance, giving up three hits and striking out eight.
For UCLA, Terry went 2 ⅓ innings, giving up three hits and two runs while Taylor Tinsley gave up three hits and one run in 3 ⅔ innings.
Neither gave up a walk.
