The absolute exhaustion etched in the faces of the players signified how much it took out of both ASU and Oklahoma to end the possibility of a repeat national champion in a 5-3 ballgame.
No. 3 ASU went down with a fight. The lineup produced eight hits and sophomore pitcher Dallas Escobedo stretched four runs over six innings with eight strikeouts.
“I threw my rise ball the majority of the time today, and it was working,” Escobedo said. “My ball was moving. My speed was up there. I was throwing probably the hardest I threw all week, I felt like. So being able to put up a good fight between me and their best batters, I felt great.”
Yet the team from Tempe couldn’t get runs on the scoreboard. Nine left on base will be the most remembered stat of the offseason as fans think of what could have been. Annie Lockwood, who has been a leader on the team all year, talked about those missed chances.
“We made her work very hard today,” Lockwood said. “We had a lot of 3?2 counts … We were in her head. We started early and we kept it going the whole time, so I'm really proud. But clearly, we did leave quite a few on base.”
At the same time Sun Devil fans must also look to the future. Freshman Amber Freeman had herself a phenomenal Women’s College World Series going 4-7 with six walks and an on base percentage of .769.
Freshman Elizabeth Caporuscio, who struggled this postseason, went 2-3 against the Sooners to give her the seventh multiple hit game of her season, second on the team.
Senior shortstop Katelyn Boyd had a disappointing end to her career. A 0-4 performance in her last game followed a 1-10 performance in the first three games of the WCWS. Both Lockwood and senior Taylor Haro did the best they could to pick up in Boyd’s absence with Lockwood belting a two RBI double off the wall in the first inning and Haro legging out two singles. However, it wasn’t enough to stop senior pitcher Keilani Ricketts, who had 13 strikeouts including two against Boyd.
“I mean, it’s not the way exactly we wanted to go, but we knew we were going to be here and we battled that game,” Lockwood said. “If one or two things go more our way, I believe that game was ours and we were going to have to face (Keilani Ricketts) one more time.”
It all went downhill in the third inning for ASU. First Oklahoma got a RBI single that blooped just over junior second baseman Sam Parlich’s head into right field. Then, a line drive bounced off the glove of a diving Alix Johnson. The sophomore outfielder tried to recover and throw to the plate, but it was too late to stop the Sooners from taking a 4–2 lead. Then the freshman third baseman lost a seemingly harmless infield pop fly in the sun letting another run score to complete the nightmare for ASU coach Clint Myers.
“You’ve got to have a little luck in this game,” Myers said. “It's a different ballgame if a couple of balls fall in, so it’s just what it is. We make no excuses. It’s just the way it happened, and great teams have to be ready for the adversity of that.”
The final breath was let out by Parlich chasing an outside pitch, insuring the game would not end like the Alabama loss — with an ASU batter staring in disbelief at the umpire. Yet it was little consolation for a team that was expected by many to be in the final.
“Every single coach told them how proud we are of their effort, of their heart and their ability,” Myers said. “We know that we're going to be better next year because we’re going to be a year older and we're young. We’re young. We started three freshmen and two sophomores, and we're young. So those freshmen will be sophomores. Those sophomores will be juniors, and we'll be back here.”
Reach the reporter at jjmckelv@asu.edu
