The Arizona Wildcats had just thrown four shutout innings against the U.S. Olympic Team when coach Mike Candrea said what everyone else was thinking.
“You shut out the U.S. team, dang it, you better shut out whoever we play next,” he said Tuesday night.
Fifth-ranked Arizona faces a stiff test at this week’s Mary Nutter Collegiate Classic in Cathedral City, California, starting with a Thursday afternoon game against Texas A&M. However, it’s nothing compared to what the Wildcats faced Tuesday night.
Pitted against arguably the best softball lineup ever assembled, the Wildcats hung in there. Alyssa Denham allowed just one hit and a walk over two innings, striking out three. She handed the ball to Mariah Lopez, who retired four of the eight batters she faced with either a strikeout or a pop up in foul territory.
“We’re always really supportive of each other, and we have a lot of fun together,” Denham said after the game, a 5-4 Team USA win in front of 2,941 fans at Hillenbrand Stadium.
Team USA’s Dejah Mulipola slips around the tag of Arizona’s catcher Izzy Pacho to score on a sacrifice fly in the third inning of an exhibition game at Hillenbrand Stadium, February 18, 2020 Tucson, Ariz.
So far this season, everything has been going pretty much as planned.
Arizona (9-1) has lost to only one college team, and that was a 10-inning marathon with No. 2 Oklahoma. Denham didn’t flinch until the fourth inning, and Lopez performed some heroics in relief, escaping a second-and-third, no-out jam, allowing one run and blanking the Sooners in the eighth and ninth innings despite an international tiebreaker rule that put a runner on second.
Lopez is winning the stat battle so far, posting an 0.84 ERA, an 0.82 WHIP and 49 strikeouts over 33⅓ innings. Denham has a 2.48 ERA, but she has a five-inning shutout of then-No. 12 Tennessee and a seven-inning no-hitter against Long Beach State under her belt. So far, she has been the top option.
Whether that changes might simply be a formality. In the end, Arizona will need a full staff if it wants to survive a grueling season. That’s partly why Candrea threw Hannah Bowen and Marissa Schuld, just to get them some experience against a high level of competition should he need more arms down the road.
“It’s really important, especially now as the times have changed in softball,” Lopez said. “You can’t just ride one person. As a staff, we showed that we complement each other well. Each of us have something different that we bring to the table.”
Denham likes to say she throws down and Lopez throws up, contrasting their favorite pitches, the drop and rise balls, but forming a staff requires more than just a complementary skill set. It includes building relationships and trust between the pitchers and the rest of the team.
Lopez arrived on campus last summer from Oklahoma, and both she and her teammates had a short time to mesh. Denham also went through that process three years ago, transferring from Louisiana Lafayette.
“That’s always a challenge,” Candrea said. “It was a pretty smooth transition with (Lopez). The ability to fit into the culture and the locker room and gain that respect from the other players is huge.”
That cohesion will be necessary this weekend as Arizona also faces No. 7 Florida, No. 18 Missouri, Auburn and San Deigo State along with Texas A&M, providing no respite for the Wildcats as they continue to try to cement their spot among the nation’s top teams.
