Courtesy of Rob Moseley -Oregon Athletics
Earlier this week, UO softball coach Mike White was talking through the reasons behind his team’s NCAA Regional success over the last five years, to the tune of a perfect 15-0 record.
White reviewed what he acknowledged were cliches: The Ducks had maintained the right balance of focus and fun over the years; they’d played to their strengths, without getting too caught up in the opponents’ scouting report; they’d taken games one pitch at a time.
Then came an important addendum to the list. “And we’ve had two really good pitchers in Jess Moore and Cheridan Hawkins,” White said, “to take that first game and through the first part of the series. Obviously Hawkins is one of the best pitchers in the country, and that’s great to have up your sleeve.”
White had the luxury of playing that ace up his sleeve Thursday, as the Ducks opened yet another NCAA Regional appearance with a win, 8-0 over BYU in six innings at Howe Field. The record-setting UO offense spun its wheels a bit in the early going, but it didn’t matter as Hawkins mowed down batter after batter.
Oregon scored without the benefit of a hit in the first inning, and scratched across another run in the third. The Ducks (47-6) finally solved BYU starter McKenna Bull during a five-run sixth inning, before walking off with the win on a Koral Costa run-scoring single in the sixth.
Afterward, BYU coach Gordon Eakin lamented how the fifth inning got away from the Cougars. Then again, he acknowledged, with the way Hawkins was pitching even the early 2-0 lead for Oregon was probably going to be enough.
“From my vantage point, everything was working for her,” Eakin said. “She’s not just an extremely talented pitcher, she’s a competitor. She took some of the things we prepared for away.”
Hawkins allowed just one hit and struck out 12. Her lone walk came with one out in the second inning; she went to a 3-1 count to the next hitter, at which point White made a mound visit. The home-plate umpire seemed to have a low strike zone, he said, and Hawkins needed to adjust to that.
Her response: five straight strikes to retire that hitter and the next, kicking off a string of eight straight outs. The junior left-hander was making her fifth career NCAA Regional appearance, and has now gone 20 2/3 innings while allowing a single earned run.
“You always get a little bit nervous the first pitch in the first inning,” said Hawkins, who will get the ball again when the Ducks face North Dakota State on Friday at 11 a.m. “But I feel confident in our team and our ability. Yes, we know what’s on the line and where we want to be and how winning these games is important, but (given) the confidence I have in my team, the nerves go away quickly.”
That confidence was merited from the outset Thursday, though it wasn’t Oregon’s cleanest game outside the circle. The Ducks left the bases loaded to end the first inning, and had three runners thrown out on the basepaths. Two of those were at home plate, once when Costa ran through a stop sign by White in the third-base coaching box.
An hour or so later, after Costa had driven in a team-high three runs with a two-run double during the fifth and the walk-off single in the sixth, player and coach could laugh off the mix-up. “Koral just really wanted to score,” White said.
Costa was thrown out at home in the fourth after reaching on a leadoff walk that capped one of several marathon at-bats the Ducks put together against Bull. They weren’t lighting up BYU’s sophomore pitcher early on, but they were putting cracks in the dam.
It finally burst in the fifth. “I think we did a very good job letting the pitcher do the work and taking it from there as a hitter,” Costa said.
White cited an adjustment the Ducks made as a team, shifting in the box to better attack Bull’s pitches. They also seemed to shorten up in general, chopping balls up the middle or blooping them into the outfield rather than relying on their impressive power.
All of those adjustments helped the Ducks turn Thursday’s NCAA Regional into a blowout. As BYU’s coach pointed out, though, the way Hawkins was throwing, it might not have mattered.
“In my opinion she’s as good as there is in the country,” Eakin said. “We’re not a bad hitting team” — the Cougars came in hitting .335 — ” and she made us look like a bad hitting team.”
