Oregon Ducks Open Up World Series Play Tonight
The #11 Oregon Ducks softball team takes on #3 Arizona State Sun Devils in the opening game of the Women’s College World Series tonight in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. The World Series is a double elimination tournament and the winner of this matchup will take on the winner of Tennessee/Alabama. The winners of both games will play Friday night and the losers of both games will play Saturday afternoon.
The Oregon Ducks finished their season 44-16 overall and 13-9 in the Pac-12. The Ducks made their way to the World Series by defeating Portland State and BYU twice in the NCAA Regionals. In the NCAA Super Regionals they lost their first game 4-2 to Texas before defeating them twice by scores of 5-4 and 10-6 the next day.
The Ducks are led by junior pitcher Jessica Moore who went 32-13 on the season. Moore posted a stellar ERA of 2.57 on the season with 31 complete games and 244 strikeouts. Freshman Karissa Hovinga chipped in with a 12-3 record on the mound in her first season with a 3.14 ERA.
Offensively the Ducks are led by Junior Samantha Pappas who had a team leading batting average of .396 with 67 hits for the year. Sophomore Kailee Cuico also had a solid season hitting for a .312 average with 12 homeruns and 53 runs batted in.
The Sun Devils accumulated a 51-9 record overall this past season with an 18-4 mark in the Pac-12. The Sun Devils defeated LIU Brooklyn in their first game of the NCAA Regionals 9-0. They then took two of three games from Syracuse of the Big East to advance.
In the Super Regionals Arizona State lost the first game against Louisiana before winning the final two games to advance to Oklahoma. The top pitchers for Arizona State are senior Hillary Bach and sophomore Dallas Escobedo. Bach went 21-2 on the season with a 1.59 ERA while Escobedo went 23-6 with a 2.35 ERA.
Senior Katelyn Boyd is the top offensive threat for the Sun Devils who had two .400 hitters on the season. Boyd hit a whopping .448 with 19 homeruns and 61 RBI’s. Sophomore Alix Johnson also hit .407 with 12 homeruns and 50 RBI’s.
The Ducks and Sun Devils split two regular season meetings this past season. They played two games on March 31st with the Ducks winning the first game 3-0 and the Sun Devils winning later that day 7-4. They were supposed to play again April 1st but the game was postponed.
The game can be seen on ESPN 2 or ESPN 3.
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