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\u201cI met her when she was a 15-year-old kid at a Ball State camp where I was coaching, and I begged her to be a Cardinal,\u201d Bartlett said. \u201cBut we lost her to Tulsa. I call her a unicorn all the time. We\u2019re not going to see her likes again for a long time. She\u2019s a competitor, she\u2019s a queen, she\u2019s a plus athlete and she\u2019s got six different ways to miss a barrel. She could have left for a ton of money, and she honestly said, \u2019This is my place.\u2019 \u201c The way she\u2019s been pitching, the Sun Devils may be going places. They\u2019re gunning for their first WCWS since 2018 and have destiny in their favor.<\/p>\n
Despite going 11-13 and finishing in sixth place in the Big 12 with a lot of injuries, ASU rallied to beat the top three seeds, including Texas Tech, to claim the conference tournament. The Sun Devils then swept all three regional games.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re a top 25 team with 45 wins, but certainly the Big 12 Tournament put a lot of wind in our sails. My goodness, everything caught fire at that point.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI guess so,\u201d suggested ASU catcher Samantha Swan, a junior from nearby Georgetown who did the most damage with a pair of hits and three RBI.<\/p>\n
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It sure didn\u2019t look so because the Sun Devils manhandled Longhorn pitchers, who collectively just allowed just one run and seven total hits and a single run off Teagan Kavan (24-5) and Co. against three regional opponents last weekend.<\/p>\n
But this Sun Devils lineup ravaged the Texas ace Teagan Kavan, who was borderline unhittable in this year\u2019s Austin Regional when she threw back-to-back three hitters. ASU, however, pounded her for eight hits with several more hard-hit outs.<\/p>\n
Texas had trailed for just half an inning in the three regional victories but never held the lead Friday night. In what resembled the Longhorns poor month of April when they went 7-7, Brown kept them in knots at the plate with a devastating changeup.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think she\u2019s been flying under the radar, said Tiare Ho-Ching, who had two hits. \u201cKenzie\u2019s been throwing well all year, so I\u2019m glad that she\u2019s getting to showcase that on a bigger stage.\u201d<\/p>\n
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\u201cAnd she also has two changeups,\u201d Swan said. \u201cThat makes it hard.\u201d<\/p>\n
Freshman Hannah Wells hit a solo home run over the center field wall for Texas in the fourth to knot the game at 1-1. The 15th homer by the rookie marked her second deep fly in four NCAA Tournament games and her sixth in the last 11 games.<\/p>\n
But Jaycie Nichols and Ashton Maloney both chased changeups out of the strike zone with a baserunner at third in the second, and Reese Atwood pulverized a ball for a line-drive out to center field to strand baserunners at the corner in the third.<\/p>\n
Texas second baseman Leighann Goode made the defensive play of the night with a diving stop of Brooklyn Ulrich\u2019s rocket grounder and a flip to shortstop Viviana Martinez for an inning-ending force-out in the fourth.<\/p>\n
But Brown was just too much for the Longhorns all night.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe had energy there the first couple of innings,\u201d White said. \u201cWe didn\u2019t fight back. We didn\u2019t respond very well.\u201d<\/p>\n
As usual, unfortunately, at least in first games of super regionals. Which, of course, can mean only one thing.<\/p>\n
White\u2019s just got to go waffles or pancakes or Cheerios Saturday morning. Can\u2019t hurt.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Arizona State pitcher Kenzie Brown (10) celebrates a final strikeout during the NCAA Softball Championship Super Regional against…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":305627,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[27,29,28],"class_list":["post-305626","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/305626","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=305626"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/305626\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/305627"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=305626"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=305626"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=305626"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}