USD drops doubleheader against No. 5 Washington

Toreros keep it close, but Huskies out-pitch, out-hit hosts in 5-0, 12-0 wins

Eric Boose / Sports Editor / The USD Vista

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For 12 innings of softball on Sunday, the University of San Diego stayed within arm’s reach of the 5th-ranked team in the country, the University of Washington. It was only in the 13th inning of play, the top of game two’s 6th, that the Huskies out-classed the Toreros, scoring seven runs to end their second win of the day an inning early, due to the NCAA’s run rule. 

The rest of the day’s play, however, had been a pitching duel between the two teams. In the first game, UW’s Sarah Willis out-did USD’s Katlin Entrup in a battle of two first-year pitchers, with two runs in both the sixth and seventh innings sealing the 5-0 win for the Huskies. 

Entrup started strong, getting the first two Washington batters out in the top of the first. She gave up a double and a walk, but came back and forced a groundout to end the inning. Willis started even stronger. After issuing a lead-off walk to San Diego’s first-year shortstop Amanda Limon, Willis was almost perfect. She sat down USD’s second, third, and fourth hitters in order to end the first, then went on to get the Toreros out one-two-three in the second, third, fourth, and fifth innings.

Willis and the rest of the UW pitching staff was the toughest USD had faced all season, but that was not going to scare them, Limon explained.

“We definitely saw better pitching, but we went out there with the right mentality, ready to compete,” Limon said.

And compete they did. While San Diego’s bats stayed cold, their rookie pitcher, Entrup, kept Washington from pulling ahead. After the first two Huskies reached base to start the top of the second, Entrup made sure they were stranded there, striking out UW’s senior catcher Emma Helm and forcing a pair of flyouts to end the inning. Entrup gave up only a walk in the third, and while she could not keep Washington center fielder Kaija Gibson from scoring after her lead-off triple in the fourth, only giving up one run to the number five team in the nation is quite the performance. USD head coach MJ Knighten called Entrup’s work one of the highlights of the day.

“Katlin (Entrup) did a great job of holding her composure, and you know, a freshman against a big team, it could have gone either way,” Knighten said. “I thought she did a really great job and brought the defense together.”

After her four stellar innings, Entrup made way for redshirt first-year Courtney Rose. Rose put up a solid performance, starting with a scoreless fifth inning, but could not contain the Huskies like Entrup had. In the sixth, Gibson once again made her way to third base for UW, this time thanks to a pair of wild pitches. But Rose worked around it, forcing a ground ball which allowed the Toreros to tag Gibson out at home for the second out of the inning. Unfortunately, Rose didn’t get the third out until after another Husky triple, this time from shortstop Sis Bates, brought home a pair of runs. 

Now down 3-0, San Diego mounted their best attempt to fight back in the bottom of the sixth. First-year center fielder Malia Benson’s grounder was too much for Bates to handle at shortstop, and Benson was aboard with an infield single, ending Willis’ bid for a no-hitter. Limon followed that up with a single to shallow left centerfield, and that was the end of Willis’ afternoon. It was also the closest USD would get to scoring.

Senior Gabbie Plain replaced Willis for the visitors from Seattle, throwing back-to-back strikeouts to end the inning. UW picked up two more runs in the top of the seventh thanks to a double from, fittingly, right fielder Madison Huskey, and Plain sent the Toreros down one-two-three (with another pair of K’s) to wrap up the 5-0 victory.

With about half an hour between the two games, Knighten urged her team to maintain their mentality and approach going into the second game.

“Honestly, throughout the whole game that first game, I kept telling them to lean in,” Knighten said. “Lean in on a game like this against a top team, because you never know what could happen, and I think they did just that. I told them, keep leaning in, going into game two.”

Plain started game two for the Huskies, while redshirt sophomore Madison Earnshaw got the nod for San Diego, a matchup of two accomplished pitchers. Last season, Earnshaw threw a no-hitter, while in UW’s season opener earlier this year, Plain threw her second career perfect game. She almost threw her third on Sunday.

Washington’s Australian ace retired the first 13 batters she faced in the second game before giving up a single to redshirt sophomore Lauren Hendrickson, the only hit Plain allowed all day. She finished with 11 strikeouts in six and two-thirds total innings pitched across the two games.

With Plain dealing, Earnshaw had to help her team stay within reach of the Huskies. And, for the most part, she did. Earnshaw gave up one run in the first, second, and third innings, and two in the fourth. According to Knighten, that was enough to keep San Diego “in the ballgame.” 

But Earnshaw was done after four innings, and while redshirt junior Halle Kyler, who started the game in right field, kept UW off the scoreboard in the fifth inning, things got messy for San Diego in the sixth, when, as Knighten noted, Washington caught their defense a little flat-footed.

“The short game kind of got to us a little bit,” Knighten said. “They saw that we were back on our heels a bit, and they exposed us in that way. But also, hitting is contagious, and once UW got those runners going on the short game stuff, the hitting started rolling for them.”

And boy did the Huskies roll. They opened the scoring with a no-outs, bases-loaded bunt single, and after USD got the first out of the inning, Gibson’s double tacked on two more runs. Two batters later, pinch hitter and San Diego native Livy Schiele sent a double to left to make the score 10-0 Washington. Before the end of the inning, Schiele came around to score from second, bringing the score up to 12-0. 

Under NCAA rules, if a team leads by seven or more runs at the end of the fifth inning or later, they win the game. UW’s 12-run lead made the bottom of the sixth USD’s last chance. Kyler led off the inning with a base hit, but nothing came of it, as Washington’s Brooke Nelson got the next three Toreros out to end the game an inning early. 

Ultimately, the scoreline is of little consequence to San Diego. A pair of losses against a top-five, non-conference opponent pose little threat to the success of the season as a whole, especially when considering the kind of performance the Toreros showcased in those losses, as Limon and Knighten explained. 

“Pitching definitely held it down the first five innings of the second game and then the first four of the first game, and we brought a lot of energy, and we had the right mentality going into this game, that we’re facing a number-five team,” Limon said. “We were ready to compete, and I think we can build off that mentality, and offensively we’ll just have to string things together.”

“I told them in the circle, after the second game, if we have this mentality of, hey, we’re approaching the game this way and we’re competing this way, we’ll be perfectly fine,” Knighten said. “Pitching is holding us down, and like Shorty (Limon) said, hopefully we can get those sticks rolling and string them all together, but I don’t doubt one bit that we’ll be right in it, I do believe that.”

San Diego will look to get things rolling, and turn strong performances into more wins, in their next games: an afternoon doubleheader against Long Beach State today, March 4. The first of those two games is scheduled to start at 2 p.m.