The Ukleja room was the NCAA pairings show party spot for 49er softball Sunday evening with subs and snacks and sodas all over the table, nervous parents in the background and a head coach who was calm, cool and calculating. With the first 32 teams placed all around the land the next foursome was the one the Beach Sweethearts of Swat (28-23) were waiting for and their NCAA journey this year will take them back this weekend to Tempe. Their first round contest is with 40-14 Syracuse of the Big East.
“I kind of like the draw,” Coach Kim Sowder said, “there aren’t any easy places to go but our pitchers were there last year and as a package the four teams in this regional are okay with us.” Translated and very much the sentiments of the fandom, better than another bus ride to Westwood where UCLA looms. The Bruins will have two toughies on their field, Florida State and San Diego State, plus a relatively soft touch in Hofstra.
Pitching of course is what turned around the LB season from the miseries of February and March to the sunshine of mid May when they became the only Big West team to make the show. (Even perennial perennial Fresno State was shutout of the NCAAs in Margie Wright’s last season.) The return of senior pitcher Taylor Petty and the revival of flame throwing sophomore Erin Jones Wesley will be challenged by a ball park that can’t hold fly balls. The good news is that sword cuts both ways.
From ‘Cuse coach Leigh Ross, “…going across country is pretty tough, but we hope to get past Long Beach State and get to Arizona State…after all they are the defending national champs….” Doesn’t ring of fear or respect. Syracuse has one very hot pitcher, Jenna Caira who has a microscopic ERA of 1.56, a record of 25-7 and 88 walks against 261 strikeouts. Of late Caira has been solved; St. Johns chased her in the Big East quarterfinals making SU sweat the Sunday TV show. We will get around to Arizona State later but simply said as the defending national champs they have it all.
The other interesting team is the Blackbirds of LIU Brooklyn junior pitcher who met and conquered LBSU in the Cathedral City Classic with a bases loaded, three-run double and a 5-2 win over Long Beach State in the desert.
First things first on Friday for the third-consecutive season, the Syracuse University softball team (40-14) plays the third Big West team of the year, they beat Northridge and Davis, and lost to UOP. Long Beach State holds a 3-0 advantage over Syracuse in the all-time series. The 49ers last faced the Orange on March 8, 2009, when LBSU picked up a 3-0 win in Long Beach. Long Beach State also has a 12-3 win over SU on Feb. 10, 2007 and a 15-2 victory on March 11, 2006.
The 49ers have faced Arizona State (46-7) 29 times since 1982 with the Sun Devils holding a 17-11-1 lead in the series. It’s the second straight season Long Beach State will travel to Tempe for the NCAA Regional, with ASU, the eventual national champion, handing LBSU a 8-0 defeat in the winner’s bracket game on day two of the regional. LIU-Brooklyn (25-33) and Long Beach State have played twice, including this year’s game, with LBSU winning the first matchup 5-1 on Feb. 27, 2010.
Long Beach State will be making its 21st appearance in an NCAA Regional Tournament, and the fourth in the Sowder era. In addition to last year’s Tempe Regional, where LBSU went 1-2, the 49ers appeared in the Los Angeles Regional at UCLA in 2009 where they finished 1-2 and at the Iowa Regional in 2008 where LBSU finished 1-2.
The 49ers last won a regional tournament in 1993 when they finished 3-1 at the California Regional and advanced to the College World Series with a 2-1 win over the Golden Bears. LBSU is 24-34 all-time in NCAA Regional Tournaments.
The Clincher
It went down to the last game of the season but once again the Beach softball bunch found an unlikely heroine. In this case it was like ordering from that Chinese menu with –with one from Column A you get one from Column B. Or with Erin Jones Wesley you get Sarah Carrasco who turned a frustrating season into one to remember with one swing of the bat which was the feature part of a 4-2 BWC clinching win over Pacific. Carrasco came into the game as EJW’s personal catcher, beat a close play at home for a 1-0 lead in the third then banged a three run homer in the fourth. She was a second-team All-Big West performer as a freshman, went 2-for-2 with three RBI and two runs scored in the win. The big game finished off a season that saw Carrasco struggle for much of the year after injuring her back in a car accident one week before the season began. (She started the season 2-for-34 in the first 17 games.) Jones-Wesley, the reigning Big West Pitcher of the Year, retired the final four hitters in relief of senior Taylor Petty who didn’t allow a hit and struck out three in the first two innings. Sowder was relieved but acknowledged the 2012 team as one of her favorites fro battling back when down by such a big margin.