Oregon smacked out 10 hits for the second straight day and Jessica Moore struck out 10 batters as the 11^th-seeded Ducks defeated BYU 6-4 in the third game of the Eugene Regional portion of the NCAA Softball Tournament Friday afternoon at Howe Field.
The Ducks (41-15) will play the winner of tonight’s game between BYU and Portland State/Mississippi State on Saturday at noon. Since Oregon is the only undefeated team remaining, a potential second game could be played at 3 p.m. in the case of an Oregon loss Saturday morning.
“We’re in the drivers seat right now,” Oregon coach Mike White said. “And it’s a good place to be, it’s exactly what we wanted to have happen.”
After two scoreless innings, Oregon grabbed its first lead with two outs in the bottom of the third. With Samantha Pappas (single), Kaylan Howard (walk) and Kelsey Chambers (single) on base, cleanup hitter Kailee Cuico roped an RBI infield single off the glove of BYU third baseman Ashlee Brawley to put Oregon in front 1-0.
Two pitches later, senior designated player Christie Nieto hit a line-drive grand slam over the right centerfield fence to extend the Ducks’ lead to 5-0. It was Nieto’s eighth home run of the season — the fourth-most for Oregon in 2012 — and the first round tripper for the host Ducks this postseason.
“The first pitch that I got was a changeup,” Nieto said. “All game she was throwing changeups and we were all hitting them into the ground and getting kind of crappy pitches. So I got a fastball the second pitch and I just drove it.”
The Cougars got two runs back the following inning on an infield single and a Kelsey Chambers throwing error that plated a pair of runners to cut the lead to 5-2. Oregon continued to hit BYU starter Hannah Howell in the bottom of the fourth, with Kaylan Howard’s two-out RBI double scoring Janie Takeda to reclaim a 6-2 advantage.
Coming off a complete-game effort against Portland State late Thursday evening, Moore was nearly unhittable through the first three innings of play on Friday. The Sutter, Calif., native struck out the side in the first and fanned six of the first 10 batters she faced before giving up her first hit in the top of the fourth.
Moore (29-12) ran into some trouble with a no-out bases-loaded jam in the top of the fifth. She gave up an uncharacteristic three walks, two of which with the bases loaded, to cut BYU’s deficit to 6-4. However, she quickly recovered to retire six of the final seven Cougar hitters in order to end the game.
The quick turnaround from Thursday night didn’t seem to faze Moore, who reached double-digit strikeouts for the third time this season.
“It’s just something that you’ve got to get used to,” Moore said. “We haven’t done that in a while, but you’ve just got to go out there and kind of start the game over again. It’s a new game, it’s a new day.”
Offensively, seven of the nine Oregon hitters recorded at least one hit in the victory. Pappas tallied her fourth consecutive multi-hit game, going 3-for-4 with a run scored, while freshman centerfielder Janie Takeda went 2-for-3 with a run scored as well.
Looking ahead to Saturday, White addressed the depth of each team’s pitching as a common factor between the respective opponents. However, the Ducks would have to lose back-to-back games to miss out on a Super Regional berth, which has only happened twice all season. Oregon State took two games in a row from Oregon in late March, and the Ducks also fell in consecutive games to Missouri and UCLA two weeks ago, though five days separated those two contests.
“They’re not going to be too tired out there,” White said. “It’s just going to be a matter of us adhering to our game plan in whatever we decide to do, and then executing like we did today.
“We had opportunities early and we executed very well.”