Without Courtney Blades, the Ducks may have been headed to Oklahoma City for the College Softball World Series.
With Blades, however, the No. 19 Oregon softball team (36-29) is coming back home, with their season finished.
But at least Oregon can take solace in the fact that their two NCAA Regional losses came at the hands of one of the nation’s premier pitchers.
On Thursday, second-seeded Southern Mississippi (60-11) knocked off the Ducks 3-0 behind Blades and her 10 strikeout, complete game performance.
Oregon proceeded to bounce back in the double-elimination tournament by performing a comeback win over Northwestern State 4-1 on Friday, and a wild 4-3 victory over 17th-ranked Louisiana-Lafayette on Saturday.
The two wins set up the rematch with SMU for Sunday, and the Ducks came out ready to conquer the strikeout queen.
Blades, who had 21 strikeouts in 13 innings pitched on Saturday night in her team’s heartbreaking 1-0 loss to LSU, showed no signs of fatigue against the Ducks.
The NCAA record holder for strikeouts in a season and a career added some more victims to her total, as Blades got 12 Ducks to go down on strikes en route to SMU’s 3-1 extra inning win.
But it was a win that she had to fight for in front of 566 fans at Tiger Park in Baton Rouge, La.
The Golden Eagles clung on to a 1-0 lead for most of the game, before Oregon tied it up in the bottom of the sixth.
Missy Coe opened the inning with a walk, and Jill Robinson followed that up with a picture-perfect bunt down the first base line that put two runners on with no outs.
Then Lindsey Welch put down an amazing bunt that somehow rolled all the way to the left field grass, scoring one to tie the game up. Robinson went all the way to third on the play, and Welch was given a rare bunt double.
But that was all Blades would allow. The hurler dug down deep and struck out Triawn Custer and Andrea Vidlund back-to-back, and got Holly Ray to ground out to end the threat.
The Ducks had one more chance in the seventh when the always dangerous Robinson came to the plate with two runners on and two outs. Blades won the battle, however, and got Robinson to go down on strikes.
“I thought that the game was decided in the bottom of the sixth inning,” Oregon head coach Rick Gamez said. “We had opportunities to score and to win the game. In fact, I think that we should have won the game today.”
The Golden Eagles clinched the victory in the eighth when they scored off of an RBI single and a walk.
Despite the tough defeat and end to their season, Gamez is extremely proud of the way his team battled back and competed all weekend.
In Friday’s win, Oregon connected for eight hits and scored runs in the second, third and sixth innings to eliminate Northwestern St.
The win set up a match-up with hometown favorite ULL. The game was tied at 3-3 until Andrea Gustafson drove in what proved to be the winning run in the fifth.
“I want to commend my team for their effort,” Gamez said. “They played extremely hard this weekend. They never gave up today, from the first pitch all the way to the very last pitch.”
One can only wonder how far the Ducks could have gone had those pitches been delivered by someone other than Blades.